The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Software Support => DOS/WinCab => Topic started by: Chris on December 02, 2004, 12:22:59 am
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DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox 3.0 Beta 5 has been released. You can get it at http://webpages.charter.net/celamantia/jukebox.
The purpose of this release is to test a major bug fix. Many of you have been experiencing random crashes over a period of time, or perhaps crashes after playing specific MP3 files. I've suspected that these are "bad" MP3 files where the last frame has an incorrect size, causing the decoder to read past the end of a buffer. I've rewritten the memory allocation, but I can't prove that I've fixed a random crash pretty much by definition. However, MP3's that were known to crash the jukebox no longer crash it.
(NOTE: I do not have my DOS test machine available so I have not been able to test the DOSCAB.EXE executable in this version, although it should still work. You should back up your old DOSCAB.EXE and JUKEBOX.DAT before trying this version.)
There are a couple of other minor new features in this version:
- A change to the mouse handling code has been made that should help solve some of the problems with touchscreens. If you have a touchscreen, please try this one out and let me know what touchscreen you have and whether or not it works. (For DOS users, you'll have to add a [Mouse] section to your JUKEBOX.INI file containing the line mouse=I33 and have your touchscreen mouse drivers loaded before launching the jukebox.)
- More, larger font sizes have been added for the dot-matrix displays, so higher resolution displays should look better now.
- Software volume control has been added. See the [VolumeControl] section of jukebox.ini for details, and look in controls.ini for how to map the new features. By default, Volume Up and Volume Down are mapped to the - (minus) and = (equals) keys, Volume Minimum and Volume Maximum are mapped to the square brackets below them, and Volume Mute is mapped to the ~ (tilde) key.
At this point, 3.0 Beta 5, although still in progress, is more stable than the released version 2.41. The biggest problem in version 3.0 is still the lack of documentation; most of the documentation you need for the beta can be found as comments in JUKEBOX.INI and the skin files.
CD skins are still broken in this version.
Please let me know if you find any wierdness.
Thanks for everyone's help and support!
--Chris
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Chris, I think you've achieved rock-solid stability here. At least on my WindowME PC...Micron Millenia RS-2100 with nothing other than factory audio and video.
I set the app up to autoplay after a 2 second period. No hiccups after 3 hours. Trust me, it wouldn't have ever made it 30-45 minutes on these same files before.
I also minimized the app a few times and did some other tasks including web surfing during this period. Just a minimal amount of audio stutters while switching apps, as expected, and no audio issues otherwise. Sounds great!
That's probably all I'll say today. I intend to kick it off and let it run overnight tonight.
Way to go!
Brian
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I have two DOS boxes that I will set up to run overnight tonight, as well.
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I have at least one file that will still kill the jukebox. It is definately a bad MP3; in Media Player, you can hear a high-pitched hiccup 16 seconds into the song. Sometimes the new build dies right at 16 seconds, sometimes it dies at the end of the song, and sometimes it dies a couple of songs later. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to account for all types of bad MP3's...
Thanks for the testing! It is much appreciated!
--Chris
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I have at least one file that will still kill the jukebox. It is definately a bad MP3; in Media Player, you can hear a high-pitched hiccup 16 seconds into the song. Sometimes the new build dies right at 16 seconds, sometimes it dies at the end of the song, and sometimes it dies a couple of songs later. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to account for all types of bad MP3's...
That's interesting. Of course the 'high pitched hiccup at 16 seconds' would be enough reason for me to repair the mp3. A little dead silence would be better and then the problem would go away on the re-encode.
I would think that it's likely that some of the freeware mp3 checking tools would identify that as bad, too. I wouldn't mind trying to check that out if it's small enough to email to me.
Brian
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I have at least one file that will still kill the jukebox.
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Chris, did you change how skins and controls work in DOSCab v.3 Beta 5? When I tried to just copy the executable over my existing one (I backed it up first), the text on my labels all came out light green, and none of my controls would function.
But when I made a new directory and copied everything that came in the Beta 5 zip file into there and set it up to point to my mp3's, everything worked as it should.
No big deal because I can do that same thing on my other machine, but I was curious about it.
*Love* the volume controls, BTW! :)
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Chris, did you change how skins and controls work in DOSCab v.3 Beta 5?
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Gotcha! Thanks. I'll give that a try on my other box tonight.
I didn't have any crashes on the one box that I left running for several hours last night, BTW. So far, so good!
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I've tried beta5 in XP and the touchscreen works(!).... good stuff...!!!!!
unfortunately it also seemed to play a mp3 file of mine at 500% speed and then crash 3 seconds after starting the song.... would you like me to email to you?
I'm having troubles with touchscreen in DOS - not doscab related but touchscreen related, so I have not been able to test that as promised.
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Just to add - the failing mp3 is very low bitrate (32kbps?) which may be the problem. None of my other mp3's are this low so I am not too bothered.
Also the clear button does not seem to clear the playlist....
Good work though!
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I did finally let the Beta 5 version run in random mode overnight last night. It was still running when I got up this morning. 8) So add those 7 hours or so to the 3 hour test I did the other day.
I then tried an earlier version using the same mp3 directory in random mode and, again, the earlier version bombed out. This time about 45 minutes after I started it from a fresh boot.
Those mp3's are all variable bit rate recorded with the '-alt -preset -extreme' settings of the LAME encoder.
I also just tried the Beta 5 version with some very low bit rate spoke word stuff (16 kbps, 32 kbps mono....) and they played OK. No high speed playback as reported above. I have run into that on some players with some files, though.
It still sounds like you've licked the biggest issue, Chris. I have some commercial audio programs that I have to reboot after running because they leave the PC sluggish and prone to lockup. But not WinCab now.
Brian
Brian
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Silver,
What hardware & software is your touchscreen? Mine doesn't work at all with WinCab.
Regards
Gary
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The one I've been using for this is a 7" lilliput widescreen touchscreen. Its USB and VGA. (small but looks good).
Some details here: http://www.lilliputuk.com/productinfo.php?product=20
It uses drivers from here: www.egalax.com.tw (http://www.egalax.com.tw)
Its mainly designed for installing in a car (12V DC) but works fine.
As of beta5, it works within Wincab. (theres a few issues of wincab losing focus 2 seconds after being launched, and having to double click selections - but altering driver settings has helped here)
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Also the clear button does not seem to clear the playlist....
The clear button does not clear the playlist; it clears the current entry. So if you key in D4 and change your mind before you hit Enter, you can use the clear button to erase the entry and start again. There is no way to clear the entire playlist... that would be pretty antisocial to those who paid for songs in that queue... :) I could add a button for that, but would only recommend it on a free-play setup or for testing. But more options is better, right?
--Chris
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The one I've been using for this is a 7" lilliput widescreen touchscreen. Its USB and VGA. (small but looks good).
Some details here: http://www.lilliputuk.com/productinfo.php?product=20
It uses drivers from here: www.egalax.com.tw (http://www.egalax.com.tw)
Its mainly designed for installing in a car (12V DC) but works fine.
As of beta5, it works within Wincab. (theres a few issues of wincab losing focus 2 seconds after being launched, and having to double click selections - but altering driver settings has helped here)
What settings did you have to tweak? I might need to put that in the docs...
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Aha - thanks for clearing up the er..'clear' button. I only run mine in 'freeplay' mode so I'm not thinking about credits. Just about skipping other peoples extremly bad taste! (Also I have some long 1 hor plus mp3 mixes.... surely too much value for 1 credit!)
Touchscreen. Mine comes with drivers plus a system tray app that lets you quickly switch between right mouse/left mouse on touching. (The drivers also let you hold down your finger to fake a right mouse click). I found that running WinCab would casue the system tray up to pop up and fight for focus with wincab. Sometimes when I alt-tabbed back it would stay in wincab, sometimes it would always pop back to desktop and the app. Killing this app solved the problem.
The other issue is that to select a song in wincab you have to double click a song (or select it and hit select) which is never natural on a touchscreen, so I used the touchscreen drivers to fake a double click on 1 touch - this works but then causes other problems out of wincab. Ideally I'd like a 1 touch 1 play system in wincab....
Hope that all made sense!
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Aha - thanks for clearing up the er..'clear' button.
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This should not be the case.
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Hi! I'm really excited about this particular project. I do have one question(or request) though, can the indexing of the songs be done in such a way that every song has a definite alphanumeric assignment in the database? I'm wondering if it could be done like a23,a789,a456 etc. The whole concept of making it like a karaoke machine which simply saves the songs with a particular number then plays once the series of numbers are entered,granting that the credit allows it. Thanks
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Hi! I'm really excited about this particular project.
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Chris,
Any chance of adding an option to maybe ignore the first "x" number of characters in the ID3 songname or filename when generating the song labels? The reason would be to hide the track number that I and I think many others use as part of the songname. For me, that would always be two digits and a space, but I'm guessing people have libraries with dashes, or three digit numbers, etc.
Also, have you noticed that the fidelity is just a tad better when the program has the focus than when it's in the background? Sounds like it to me. I found that interesting....not a huge difference but it is a slightly fuller sound when it's given more resources, it seems.
Brian
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Any chance of adding an option to maybe ignore the first "x" number of characters in the ID3 songname or filename when generating the song labels?
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By default, it will ignore anything up to the last dash-space, so "01 - Josie And The Pussycats - 3 Small Words" will come out as "3 Small Words". However, "02-Stairway To Heaven" will not be changed because there is no space after the dash. Likewise, "02 Stairway To Heaven" will not be changed because there is no dash.
Understood. Thanks for reminding me. I appreciate all the hard work you've put in to making your program world-class.
If only the original ID3 tag fields were longer. I went with the "01 Stairway to Heaven" philosophy because that's three characters for the track number. "01 - Stairway to Heaven" uses up 5 characters for the track number out of the woefully inadequate 30 characters available.
01 Fanfare for the Common Man
vs
01 - Fanfare for the Common Ma
I looked into using the filename and setting the 'use ID3 tag's' kind of option to 'false', but quickly saw that the artist field gets to be a problem then. Things I store in Genre\Artist\Album end up with the Genre as the artist field. Compilation albums...no way. So I'll stick with the ID3 tags.
I'll slowly convert to the "01 - Stairway To Heaven" for both the ID3 songname and the file name. It seems to be more standard. I'll live with more truncation on the songnames in the long run.
Brian
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If only the original ID3 tag fields were longer.
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I didn't realize that. That's good news.
I'll be 'touching' every MP3 I have over the next few weeks as I continue to add album art and reorganize my archiving to CDROM's. I'll add ID3v2 tags while I do that.
Thanks. Maybe this will be my last time to do this.. ::)
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I didn't realize that.
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Thank you for the neat Jukebox program. It looks spectacular.
One issue I'm having is my trackball doesn't work in wincab. I'm running an ultimarc trackball via a usb optipac. I have a working pointer in Windows and I've verified that mouse=Enabled is in the jukebox.ini. When I run wincab I can see a pointer in the middle of the jukebox but I can't move it.
Any ideas?
Thanks! :)
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One issue I'm having is my trackball doesn't work in wincab.
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Will do.... THANKS!! :)
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Hi Chris,
Is there any way to control to size of the 'new, larger fonts' that are used for the credit dispaly and the selection display or are they set automatically based on the resolution?
PS - Nice job on this release, it seems to have fixed a number of problems.
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Hi Chris,
Is there any way to control to size of the 'new, larger fonts' that are used for the credit dispaly and the selection display or are they set automatically based on the resolution?
PS - Nice job on this release, it seems to have fixed a number of problems.
They are set automatically based on the size of the displays. Each display has a setting for height in pixels (relative to the skin background) and a number of lines. Once the displays have been rescaled and rotated, the true height is divided by the number of lines and the next smallest font is used. So if you need a larger font, reduce the number of lines in a display or increase the height of the display. The larger fonts were added because at resolutions over 1024x768, the largest font was already in use and the gaps between lines would just get bigger. There used to be four sizes of dot-matrix fonts available; now there are six.
With the bigger fonts now available, at least one of the skins will need tinkering to look right.
The fixed fonts are necessary for the dot-matrix displays, as dot matrix fonts look horrible when auto scaled. It's a ton of work to add a new dot-matrix font, though, because they're created by hand. I've considered allowing regular TrueType fonts in the displays, but that's a low priority right now.
--Chris
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Seems to work fine on a p120 laptop under win98se with 32mb ram although the pointer wont work in the software (not earlly a problem as I will sort out an external keypad for it soon.
Does this support mps3's locatch on a different machine (I assume as long as the path is correct it will?)
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Seems to work fine on a p120 laptop under win98se with 32mb ram although the pointer wont work in the software (not earlly a problem as I will sort out an external keypad for it soon.
There's a fix for that; get http://webpages.charter.net/celamantia/jukebox/alleg41.dll and put it in the jukebox directory. Or disable the mouse in jukebox.ini if you're not using it.
Does this support mps3's locatch on a different machine (I assume as long as the path is correct it will?)
If the remote directory is mapped to a drive letter it will, but it does not support UNC paths. The entire MP3 is loaded before its played, though, so if you have a slow network you may have a delay between songs.
--Chris
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If the remote directory is mapped to a drive letter it will, but it does not support UNC paths.
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If the remote directory is mapped to a drive letter it will, but it does not support UNC paths.
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Hi Chris,
Is there any way to control to size of the 'new, larger fonts' that are used for the credit dispaly and the selection display or are they set automatically based on the resolution?
PS - Nice job on this release, it seems to have fixed a number of problems.
They are set automatically based on the size of the displays. Each display has a setting for height in pixels (relative to the skin background) and a number of lines. Once the displays have been rescaled and rotated, the true height is divided by the number of lines and the next smallest font is used. So if you need a larger font, reduce the number of lines in a display or increase the height of the display. The larger fonts were added because at resolutions over 1024x768, the largest font was already in use and the gaps between lines would just get bigger. There used to be four sizes of dot-matrix fonts available; now there are six.
With the bigger fonts now available, at least one of the skins will need tinkering to look right.
The fixed fonts are necessary for the dot-matrix displays, as dot matrix fonts look horrible when auto scaled. It's a ton of work to add a new dot-matrix font, though, because they're created by hand. I've considered allowing regular TrueType fonts in the displays, but that's a low priority right now.
--Chris
Thanks Chris. Now that I know how they work I should be able to tweak the displays as need. I did notice the automatic size change on the song dispaly. Works just as you sais.
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Thanks Chris. Now that I know how they work I should be able to tweak the displays as need. I did notice the automatic size change on the song dispaly. Works just as you sais.
And I just (literally seconds ago) added the ability to change that font, so now the jukebox will ship with a couple of .fnt files for the displays. Again, I may add TrueType to the displays later, but for now this is a quick way to deal with the issue. I just whipped up a quick Arial font and it worked fine. I'll probably add a couple of LED-ish fonts to the distribution.
--Chris
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Reducing the size of the Credits and Selection display by 10 pixels got me the font size I wanted. Cheers.
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[quote author=Reaper link=topic=28354.msg244934#msg244934
That should be fine & as for the delay, I have a 10/100 switched network but if there is a delay I will just think of it as the "Record" changing :)
You will have no probems for this unless you have huge mp3 files - I have a pile of long mixes (45mins+each) which introduces a huge delay.
Its only a problem for wireless which is too slow not to stream.
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Well I got the 98 machine (the jukebox) and the XP machine (temporary file server/main machine) talking fine & maped a drive letter on the lappy (98) & sorted the path to said drive letter & fired up WinCab, it started going through the mp3s as usual but took ages (15 mins +) an then crashed! - any ideas what the problem might be? - I know it is a low spec machine (p120 with 32mb ram) but it usually plays mp3's fine. The only thing I think it could be is the way the files are stored, each album has its own folder, is this the problem?
Cheers
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Well I got the 98 machine (the jukebox) and the XP machine (temporary file server/main machine) talking fine & maped a drive letter on the lappy (98) & sorted the path to said drive letter & fired up WinCab, it started going through the mp3s as usual but took ages (15 mins +) an then crashed! - any ideas what the problem might be? - I know it is a low spec machine (p120 with 32mb ram) but it usually plays mp3's fine. The only thing I think it could be is the way the files are stored, each album has its own folder, is this the problem?
WinCab must actually load each MP3 file into memory to search the file for ID3 tags. Thus, during the initial indexing run you are moving massive amounts of data over the wire. If you set UseID3 to False in jukebox.ini, can you get through an indexing run?
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not tried that, will have a look & get back to you :)
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You might also try running the jukebox once on the server and then copying the DATA folder over to the laptop. If your songs are in album folders inside artist folders, though, you should get excellent results with UseID3=False.
--Chris
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the songs are just in album folders, I have just started running again now, will post back when it finishes, one way or the other!
Cheers
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Well, its almost 1am here (been going over 45 mins now) it seems to be going well if a little slow, I am off to bed, will report back when I get up again tomorrow. (its doing 40 albums & 3 folders of random mp3's)
Cheers
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OK, well 10 hours later it was still running! :o
& it was still on the folder it was doing when I left it last night!! - I realised that the random mp3 folders had also got videos in them so I have just got the 40 albums & am trying again I will report back later!
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Well it took an hour but it finally seems to have worked! - YAY!!!
I think the machine is mostly to blame as it also stutters when changnig pages of songs
Cheers
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Hi,
I installed a fresh version of DosCab 3.0 B5 and on startup it gives me the following message:
SKIN ERROR (skin file: skins\defskin.ini)
Icon OnImage not found
r-ledon.bmp
I checked the skins folder and there is a file there. So I erased it and replaced it again and again with no results. Any Suggestions?
Blindman
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Hi,
I installed a fresh version of DosCab 3.0 B5 and on startup it gives me the following message:
SKIN ERROR (skin file: skins\defskin.ini)
Icon OnImage not found
r-ledon.bmp
I checked the skins folder and there is a file there. So I erased it and replaced it again and again with no results. Any Suggestions?
Are you running it from a shortcut or a front-end? If so, try running it by double-clicking on the wincab.exe executable directly. If that works, you need to make sure that the jukebox directory is the startup directory in the frontend or shortcut, or change the path references in the skin.
Now that I'm saying that, though, if that was the case it should have errored out earlier. But try that anyway and let me know what happens.
--Chris
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I'm running it straight through Dos 7. But no front-end or shortcut. I finally had it startup due to a missing dash in the filename. Now it just updated the music database and when I play a mp3 it just stays at 0:00 and that's it. I'm running a SB 16 in Dos 7. Do you think I have to change the IRQ settings in jukebox.ini?
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I'm running it straight through Dos 7. But no front-end or shortcut. I finally had it startup due to a missing dash in the filename. Now it just updated the music database and when I play a mp3 it just stays at 0:00 and that's it. I'm running a SB 16 in Dos 7. Do you think I have to change the IRQ settings in jukebox.ini?
Is it a true SB16, or is it an SB16PCI that only emulates a SB16?
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It's a SB16PCI. Sorry for the confusion. ;)
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It's a SB16PCI. Sorry for the confusion.
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Go get yourself the cheap ALS4000 soundcard from CompUSA. You'll be glad that you did... it will save you hours of troubleshooting and frustration. Good luck.
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I can get sound in all my emulators except DosCab. :'(
Thanks for the link to the soundcard on CompUSA. I don't have one where I live so I'll try to get one tomorrow online. Thanks for the help ;D
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I can get sound in all my emulators except DosCab.
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I cant get the mouse or touchscreen to work in wincab
everything below works in win98 but not in wincab
ps2 (logitech) mouse
serial (elo) touchscreen
ps2 +serial
i believ i tried every opiton for mouse in jukebox.ini
i have tried the new alleg41.dll found in this tread.
when i use any of the mouse options with visible cursor i get a cousor in the middle of the screen
but i cant move it.
i have tried the same .zip on my ordinary desktop(xp) machine and it works fine there
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Great program! I have the same problem, no mouse in Win 98. I had it working on a XP gamecab that I downgraded to 98 and now the mouse doesn't work. I have a small control panel and the mouse was the only way to easily select songs. Any ideas?
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I don't know why this is only cropping up on Windows 98. I'll see if I can figure this out this weekend.
--Chris
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Thanks.
tell me if you need any more information about my system.
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Strange days indeed today. ???
Just ran the wincab jukebox program on my pc tonight and now when I skip pages, it automatically resets itself to the first page in the playlist before I can make a selection! never happenned before.
Re-loaded latest beta version and tried again to no avail.
Do I need to reintegrate any files that may be corrupted into the system32 folder??
Any thoughts??
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Strange days indeed today. ???
Just ran the wincab jukebox program on my pc tonight and now when I skip pages, it automatically resets itself to the first page in the playlist before I can make a selection!
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I think that was me. :-[
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Just wanted to take a minute to thank you for WinCab. I have been trying different Jukebox software setups to see how they performed and so far I am most pleased with your latest version of WinCab. It loaded up without a hitch and scanned my MP3s folder very quickly and I especially like the retro Jukebox look. So far it is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again.
Mllkat
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Just wanted to take a minute to thank you for WinCab.
I'm glad you've found it useful!
--Chris