Jukebox for Grandmother

[jwb]

My grandmother has lots of old albums she loves to listen to.  However, her record player keeps dying and she's decided she doesn't want to fix it or get a new one.  She gave me all her old albums since she had no use for them.  Her record player is one of those old cabinet pieces thats more of a piece of funiture than an audio rack.  She still uses it to listen to the radio.

I've often thought of burning her albums to CD's (or even DVD's) and getting her one of those portable DVD players that she could hook up to the AUX of the amp.  The problem is she's not capable of navigating the menu system of the portable DVD player.  It needs to be dead simple, and most of them aren't.

I have an old IBM Thinkpad 380ED, and was thinking about installing either DOSCab or WinCab on it.  First I have some questions:

1. It can be run like a "real" jukebox, correct?  With just a keyboard?  So all she would have to do to start a song/album is type "A1" (or is it "A01")?

2. Can it be set up to play a whole album at a time?  To reduce the number of selections....

3. Can you build playlists?  Can she, for example, queue up a series of albums easily (A01, B12, page, page, D03, page, page, E04... etc....)

4. Is it possible to display album art (even if I have to scan it myself)?

5. Can the machine be set up to start up in DOS/Wincab?

6. (really only a wish list item...) can it play pictures in a slideshow mode while the music is playing?  This is a bit out there, I'm sure, but I was thinking the laptop could double as a Digital picture frame...

[Chris]

I have an old IBM Thinkpad 380ED, and was thinking about installing either DOSCab or WinCab on it.  First I have some questions:

I used a 380ED for early testing.  DOSCab's been having some trouble with the DOS sound drivers for it, but Windows should be fine.

1. It can be run like a "real" jukebox, correct?  With just a keyboard?  So all she would have to do to start a song/album is type "A1" (or is it "A01")?

Yes, this is how it's designed to run.  You could hack apart a USB gamepad or keypad and hook up large buttons with big numbers if she has vision issues.  (And in classic mode it would be A1, not A01.  I would not recommend an album-cover mode on a 380ED.)

2. Can it be set up to play a whole album at a time?  To reduce the number of selections....

In album mode, yes, but again album mode would not run well on a 380ED unless you keep the cover art images really small (like 20K or so).

3. Can you build playlists?  Can she, for example, queue up a series of albums easily (A01, B12, page, page, D03, page, page, E04... etc....)

Right now it acts as a regular jukebox so there is no support for saving a playlist. But of course you can queue up as many songs as you like up to the limit you configure (default is 500).

4. Is it possible to display album art (even if I have to scan it myself)?

Yes, but again, keep them small for a 380ED.

5. Can the machine be set up to start up in DOS/Wincab?

For DOS you would add doscab.exe to your autoexec.bat; for Windows you would put a shortcut to it in your startup group.

6. (really only a wish list item...) can it play pictures in a slideshow mode while the music is playing?  This is a bit out there, I'm sure, but I was thinking the laptop could double as a Digital picture frame...

Not yet, but this is on the wish list already, for exactly that reason.  Once again, though, on a 380ED you would get skips in the music loading full-screen images during playback.

--Chris

[jwb]

Thanks for the quick response.

...(And in classic mode it would be A1, not A01.  I would not recommend an album-cover mode on a 380ED.)
...but again album mode would not run well on a 380ED unless you keep the cover art images really small (like 20K or so).
...Yes, but again, keep them small for a 380ED.

Is the problem with album mode the size of the images for the speed of the 380ED?  I would think the cover art would need to be no larger than 400x300 - which shouldn't be too big.

6. (really only a wish list item...) can it play pictures in a slideshow mode while the music is playing?  This is a bit out there, I'm sure, but I was thinking the laptop could double as a Digital picture frame...

Not yet, but this is on the wish list already, for exactly that reason.  Once again, though, on a 380ED you would get skips in the music loading full-screen images during playback.

Actually, I wasn't thinking during playback, I was thinking about when it's not playing music.  Here's how I envisioned it.  She'd leave the laptop on, sitting on top of the cabinet.  It would be displaying random images (presized to 800x600 in the case of the 380ED) in a slideshow - like a digital picture frame.  She wanted to listen to music, so she touches a key to end the slideshow and bring up the jukebox interface.  Loads up her songs and listens to them.  When she's done, and stops the music, she can hit a key to put it back in slideshow mode.

I'll try to download it and try it out.  Thanks for the info.

[Chris]

Is the problem with album mode the size of the images for the speed of the 380ED?  I would think the cover art would need to be no larger than 400x300 - which shouldn't be too big.

Specifically the problem is the speed of the hard drive.  Each image needs to load before the sample buffer finishes playing.  Thus it's not the size on the screen that's the problem, just the size of the file.  And WinCab will re-size the images to be square.  I would suggest 200x200 images; the 380ED only has an 800x600 screen if I remember right.

[jwb]

2. Can it be set up to play a whole album at a time?  To reduce the number of selections....

In album mode, yes, but again album mode would not run well on a 380ED unless you keep the cover art images really small (like 20K or so).

I've installed it and played with the ini files, but how do I set it up to play a whole album at once?  I've set it up to use the cd4-1 skin, and Alpha for the selection mode.  How to I get it so that if she hits 'A' (or even '1' in numeric mode) it plays the whole album.  Right now, it wants me to input A for the album and then a track.

[Chris]

2. Can it be set up to play a whole album at a time?  To reduce the number of selections....

In album mode, yes, but again album mode would not run well on a 380ED unless you keep the cover art images really small (like 20K or so).

I've installed it and played with the ini files, but how do I set it up to play a whole album at once?  I've set it up to use the cd4-1 skin, and Alpha for the selection mode.  How to I get it so that if she hits 'A' (or even '1' in numeric mode) it plays the whole album.  Right now, it wants me to input A for the album and then a track.

In numeric mode select track 00 to play the whole album.  UseTrackZero needs to be set to False and UseZero needs to be set to True.