New here - Software Question

[Baker_Aus]

Hi guys,

I'm new here. I found this forum via Google when I was searching for Jukebox software.

My question is this:

My Fiance hired out a jukebox for our engagement party tomorrow (umm, after midnight now, so today ). When it was delievered, and I went for a look at it, I instantly noticed that it was a PC based jukebox. I've been thinking of making one of these up for quite a while, but there is one thing that is stopping me - software.

Looking at this jukebox, the software, while basic, is EXACTLY what I want! Its a very basic DOS menu (boots from a DOS shell as well), with some defined menus :

• How To Use
• 40's
• 50's

and so on. It has 4 buttons on the front - CANCEL, UP, DOWN, and SELECT. You obviously use the Up/Down to select a song, and select to add it to the playlist. Its designed around Singles - which is what I want.

Basically now after seeing this I want to design one for my brothers 18th birthday. I don't want one that plays albums - lets face it, a lot of albums have 2 good songs and 7 horrible ones.

Can anyone tell me what software can do this? I've had a look in the sticky and I couldn't find anything that jumped out immediatly at me even after trying several.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers,

Kevin Baker

[Chris]

The only DOS singles jukebox I'm aware of is my own DOSCab Jukebox.  It doesn't have the menus like the one you described, though: you would set up letter and number buttons, or just numbers (it defaults to four letters and four numbers for 16 selections at once, but you can set it for whatever you want), and a couple of buttons to change pages, and as many optional buttons as you want like SELECT, RANDOM, RADIO, PAUSE, SKIP, etc.  It'll also adapt to systems with trackballs or joysticks for selection.  You'l want the 3.0 beta version, as the "official" version 2.41 is very out of date (I really need to remove it...)

You can take a look at it at http://webpages.charter.net/celamantia/jukebox .

While you're here, check out the Project Announcements forum, as there are some nice jukebox examples there.

--Chris

[unclet]

Chris jukebox software is cool, but can I ask why you are limiting yourself to DOS?

[Chris]

For a dedicated jukebox, DOS makes a lot of sense.  It'll boot extremely fast, can be powered off without problems, never crashes, and will run on very little hardware (make use of that old P120 motherboard with 32 MB of RAM in the closet!).  The biggest downside is that networking is a pain in the tail to set up, and a network would be the fastest way to add songs.  Also, some sound cards have much better drivers in Windows than DOS, or may not have drivers at all. 

--Chris

[Space Fractal]

I can only give just Chris right. DosCAB is coll to give the old machines live again.

If I didden't have a MAME cabinent, I have choosed DosCAB in my own jukebox.

The best things to add new songs, could been add some seriel/parrallel support. It slow, but it (should) works.