any 640x480 /256 color / touch based juke software for win98?

[Xphile]

I just bought a couple of scantouch 3000 tablets off ebay,

http://www.scancorporation.com/products_touch.html
(st300white)

(10.4" touch LCD, cyrix media gx processor running at 266mhz, 128mb ram, laptop hard drive, lan, etc)
<no sound or usb outputs, but there are headers on the motherboard and they work, so I can hack some jacks into the case..>

anyways I 'm hoping to find something to turn them into something I can listen to music with..:-)

I installed and tried Barcrests' program, but it won't run 640x480 so I can't use it..

tried quickly searching through here, but wasn't sure searching "640x480 touch" was the best search term to catch all possibilities..

I read Saint's stickey but many of the links in the stickey are dead or moved or in russian or sold out to yahoo <g>..

I also ended up with two older touchscreen units - same units except with AMD 133mhz, 32 megs ram and older motherboards <no sound> running win95 - what on earth could I do with them?

 (they're not really slideshow picture frame contenders as they have fans and are a tad big for that purpose)

so, any suggetions on either question?


edit:
I forgot to mention the DSTN screen can only do 256 colours..not sure if that's an issue too or not.. (i read it is with dos cab)

[Space Fractal]

did you tried Chris Wincab/Doscab, that maybe that application that use lesser resouser than other jukebox software (includning my own, Arcade Music Box, that have a very simple 640x480 Touch screen part, but I guess you may not like that)?

Im tried Sk-Jukebox to, but it diddent work very well on 640x480 (some graphics missing), when I updated the wiki.

Xloppy may also work. The application is soon back in wiki, because some people here in BYOAC said it work very well on a 640x480 touch screen. It even this application was not suited to suit to a jukebox cabinet, but htpc cabinet market (hence it seen it work very well on both type of cabinents trouch, I should have tested how it works).

If you look in the wiki section, Silverjuke is a option too. Look on (where Xloppy should been there):
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Jukebox_Software.

We should add more software to test, but these is a start.

[Xphile]

That wiki is Great! I never knew about it..
Your program sounds good too.. I'll install it on my desktop computer first and see how it works I'm new to juke software, so I don't even know much about them..:-)

oh yeah, doscab/wincab won't work because I read it requires 16bit colour and my screen only does 256 colours -it would be cool if it did, then I'd have more options..
<I'm glancing in Chris's direction  >

any more suggestions are very welcome... anyone?

[Space Fractal]

Arcade Music Box:
My own software also require 16bit colors. Blitz+ didden't alow 8bit color, so I can't doing that. but....

I'm did not use Blitz methoed to change resoulution, but it only tried to change the desktop resoulution via an dll. So if you use a 640x480 256color, and AMB can't change to 16bit color, it should countinue to work with the 256colors with no crash. But I have no clue, AMB would work with 256 colors, and it even show the graphics or not.

But if amb work in 256 colors, it may been aufull to look with the default purple, so you may tried to use moon light, that only use grey colors. Howover AMB work best with a controllers or an spinner.

Wincab:
It sad, Wincab (or even doscab) didden't allow 256colors, wich would also been great.

You may even ask Chris in the dedicated forum about this.

Silverjuke:
I remember this software didden't change the resoulution as all, but just scaling the graphics. So you may try this. Maybe a new skin is required to look good in 256 colors.

SK Jukebox:
You may been luki to get this to work in 640x480, even some (few) graphics may been missing, but ask Salonking about it (it have it own forum too). Sk Jukebox do never change the resoulutions, and use very simple (and only use white color) but very efffective GUI.

[Chris]

I tried supporting 256 colors, but it was a nightmare and so few systems required it that it didn't seem worth the effort to do.  In addition, touchscreen support isn't working in Win98.  So that's two strikes against WinCab in this particular instance. 

[Xphile]

Well, I've got 4 win98 touchcreen all-in-one-tablet (256 colour) LCD's that work just fine..:-)

Except I have no jukebox software that I can run on them..:-(

Seriously tho', if the mouse reacts to touch and moves around the screen to where you touch and a tap equals a click and a double tap equals a double click, what is the issue?
That's "win 98 supports it" enough for me..<g>

Is it that hard to remove the restriction based on colour bit depth?

I'd be happy with 256 greyscale or even 16 colours at this point.

 

Edit:

or, do you have a copy of the last version of wincab before the restriction was imposed..I could put up with having a build from years gone by if it meant it would at least *run* on 256 colour..

(please, someone have an archive..) 

[Chris]

I don't think it ever truly did work on 256 color, and I know the touchscreen has never worked under 98.  It has to do with how the underlying library reads the mouse code; it uses mickeys instead of absolute coordinates, and touchscreens don't return mickeys.  I modified the library to return absolute coordinates on XP, but that change just freezes the mouse on 98.

The restriction on colors isn't arbitrary.  256 color modes use palettes, so all colors used in an image have to be in the palette ahead of time.  With some work you can pre-load the images, process them, extract the most common collors, build a reasonable palette, and convert all the images down to a paletted mode, and indeed I did try to do this, but it was not going well and I ended up deciding to put the time into more pressing issues.

--Chris

[Barry Barcrest]

Will they not even do 800x600 in interlaced mode? Mind you if you are running windows 98 i think you have it RE: Freebox anyway as jacktucky said it won't run under 98. Mind you, you could probably get 2000 running on that spec and freebox does work on that.

[Space Fractal]

Myself I dosne't like interlacing, because its flicking. WHen it flinking it may been harder to read.

I even tried my own Arcade Music Box, but it diddent run on 256colors, blitz+ didden't like the format. Canvas seen only been in 16bit colors or more.

Chris: You could maybe make a B&W only vesion of win/doscab in only 256colors? Also convert all images to 256 B&W colors. And then there are 256greytones, it may been easier.

You could not make a invisable mouse pointer in Win 98 mode and only change the desktop mode (and not directX or other mode)? I got a little dll, that can change the desktop resoulution (and change back when exist). If the touchscreen can work in Win 98, this may been the only way.

Xloppy may been even need 16bit colors. But, you can may force you screen to use a 16bit mode, so you can use wincab (wich I seen you like most)?


 

[Chris]

Chris: You could maybe make a B&W only vesion of win/doscab in only 256colors? Also convert all images to 256 B&W colors. And then there are 256greytones, it may been easier.

It's theoretically possible... it'sjust that there are so many other things that affect so many more people that need the programming time first.

You could not make a invisable mouse pointer in Win 98 mode and only change the desktop mode (and not directX or other mode)? I got a little dll, that can change the desktop resoulution (and change back when exist). If the touchscreen can work in Win 98, this may been the only way.

If you ran in a windowed mode this might work.  Setting the resolution to a non-standard size, say 639x479 instead of 640x480, would make it run in a window that was nearly fullscreen.  It might work.

[Xphile]

256 greyscale would be a cool moonlight look..subdued even..
I'm not sure I understand the other parts of the discussion with regards to screen size  tho'..

I have a feeling the general concensus is I should put them in a box in storage until technology advances far enough to make them dumpster fill..<?>

And here I thought they'd make some kind of useful project..

[Chris]

According to the spec sheets, they have 2MB of video RAM.  There would be no point in them having more than 256K unless the video cards were capable of higher color depths.  The LCD panel may be limited to 256 colors, but that doesn't mean the video card is.  I wonder if you can get 640x480 at 16 bit color depth in DOS; that would also get you touchscreen support, as the touchscreen works in DOS.  The tricky part would be finding a DOS sound driver.

--Chris

[Barry Barcrest]

Well i think you should be running Windows 2000 on there as that will work with that spec. I had it running on P233 libretto with 32mb of ram and it was usable. Also as chris says it seems strange you can't do 16bit colour. My touch panel has a 2mb intergrated video card and that does 1024x768 in 16 bit colour. Obviously the screen will be an important factor but it just seems a littl strange to me. Have you tried to force it into 16bit colour? I don't think you should bin them at all i just think you need to do a bit more tinkering with them... Like i said windows 2000 would be far better and from what i understand should resolve the touchscreen issues with wincab.

UPDATE:
I just checked out the site you linked to, it is only the dual scan screens that are 256 colours the others are active matrix and do 256,000 colours. Which means you can do 16bit

You have the one with DSTN don't you...