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Software Support => DOS/WinCab => Topic started by: Chris on November 14, 2005, 10:37:38 am

Title: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on November 14, 2005, 10:37:38 am
I'm sure three or four of you are wondering what's happening with DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox.

The latest version was posted July 30th.  Since then, I've had quite a bit going on in my life, preventing me from working on the jukebox or even visiting this site much.  In addition, I've been travelling for the past week, so I have not responded to recent support requests, and I know some other pending support requests have been left hanging.

Version 8 is compiling quite an impressive bug list; it may actually be the buggiest version I've released.  This is due to a number of new features that were added in the version that changed some very basic structures in critical ways.

Right now I feel like the jukebox is at a crossroads.  In order to put in many of the requested new features like genres and filters, I'll need to rewrite large sections of the code, probably bumping the version number to 4 even though there hasn't been a proper 3.0 release.  Obviously, the many bugs in version 8 need to be fixed.

I will try to get back on track with the work on this jukebox; I truly apologize for the long delay to everyone waiting for updates and technical support.  Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

--Chris
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: CC6264 on November 14, 2005, 03:51:56 pm
Thanks for the heads up Chris. I was starting to think - do I change my jukebox to something else as I had found that Doscab is great software - just doesn't appear stable.

And we are coming into the party season in Australia!

Cheers Mate
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on November 14, 2005, 04:13:45 pm
I think version b7 is much more stable... if you don't need any of the new features in b8, b7 might be a better bet for you...

Anyway, I'll snap out of it and get back to work!  :)

--Chris
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: RacerX on November 17, 2005, 11:10:35 pm
Don't worry about it, Chris.  You're doing this on your own time.  We're all fortunate that you even spent the time to develop DOSCab/WinCab in the first place.

Thanks for all of the hard work you have put into this project!
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: lfuller on November 19, 2005, 01:28:25 pm
Hi,

I've been using wincab on my 450mhz pc running win98 and it's been great...

I use music match to supertag all my new downloads and this includes downloading the cover artwork which is saved as part of the id3v2 tag... any thoughts on having a function to extract the picture as an extra to searching for jpegs?

Can't wait for future versions

Regards

Liam
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: garyh on November 29, 2005, 05:00:33 pm
Chris,

No need to apologise, it's your time, spend it on what you want to!

Regards

Gary

p.s. forget the fancy stuff, all I want for Christmas is touchscreen support under Win98!  :)
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on November 30, 2005, 10:08:01 am
Chris,

No need to apologise, it's your time, spend it on what you want to!

Regards

Gary

p.s. forget the fancy stuff, all I want for Christmas is touchscreen support under Win98!
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: starcrudph on December 01, 2005, 04:07:13 am
chris, do you still have the link for the most stable version of doscab? i dont need all the fancy stuff. thank you for making such a great product freely available.
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on December 01, 2005, 08:05:20 am
chris, do you still have the link for the most stable version of doscab? i dont need all the fancy stuff. thank you for making such a great product freely available.
Unfortunately, I can't have them both up at once due to lack of space.  Most of the issues are for CD skins; if you are using the classic juke skins, you should be quite stable...

--Chris
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: starcrudph on December 01, 2005, 08:02:39 pm
ok chris thanks for the info. ive been a fan since it came out, even if i didnt get the first versions running at all.lolz
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: DarkKobold on December 09, 2005, 11:43:18 am
Yeah, I'd also like an X-mas gift of Touchscreen support under 98.
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: CC6264 on December 09, 2005, 04:24:08 pm
And can I have a scrolling "coming up next" please.

Regards being a tad too unstable - it appears that my old pentium was dying and it only ran the jukebox software. Have since upgraded to a refurbished 1000mhz and all is well with b8.

Thanks again for some great software  ;D
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on December 09, 2005, 04:29:23 pm
And can I have a scrolling "coming up next" please.
Hmm...  I could add a paging button to this similar to the way the Popular list works.... or are you looking for it to auto-scroll?

--Chris
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: CC6264 on December 09, 2005, 06:10:34 pm
Auto scroll would be nice - similar to AJ8.

If you had your song list set to say 10 or 15 - the skin (classic) only allows for viewing a few ( 5 I think) on the list and an auto scroll would allow to see what was on the list or if thier song was added.

Cheers
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: saint on January 06, 2006, 08:27:51 pm
Chris - I can host for you if you'd like?

chris, do you still have the link for the most stable version of doscab? i dont need all the fancy stuff. thank you for making such a great product freely available.
Unfortunately, I can't have them both up at once due to lack of space.  Most of the issues are for CD skins; if you are using the classic juke skins, you should be quite stable...

--Chris
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on January 06, 2006, 08:40:25 pm
That would be great, Saint!  Thank you! 

Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on January 19, 2006, 12:40:18 am
I'm SO embarrassed!

I went to do some work on this before I start rehearsals for "Beauty and the Beast" and all my free time goes out the window.. and I seem to have lost my bug list!  I've been going through posts to try o reconstruct it and these are the pending short-term issues I've found:

Bugs:
- Multi-page CD's sorting incorrectly
- Touchscreen in Windows 98/2000
- Unicode filenames on non-US English codepage filesystems
- CD's that are broken into multiple parts may not show the correct artist
- Selecting all tracks on a CD may crash the jukebox
- MIDI files still don't reflect the correct track length

Features:
- Scrolling "coming up next" display
- Add support for Seeburg-style 3-digit track selection
- Add support for "Skip X pages" buttons

(Yeah, I know the feature request is a lot longer, with genre's, filters, etc.  These are for reasonable "short term" things.)

There was an additional reported bug having to do with selecting tracks on CD skins with the mouse and BTN_GUI_SELECT, but I have not been able to reproduce that problem, at least in WinCAB.

I know the buglist is longer than this.  Does anyone have any pending bugs that are not on this list?

Thank you so much for your patience and support!

--Chris
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: CC6264 on January 19, 2006, 03:36:59 pm
Chris
Ever since I rebuilt my old Win 98 machine - I have not found any bugs, does not crash, everything runs well. I have all the music on a seperate drive from the OS.
I even lent my juke to my neighbours for a party and they didn't break it.

Thanks for adding the scrolling 'coming up' in the next version.

Cheers

Craig
 :)
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: cscon115 on January 22, 2006, 09:56:07 am
I just downloaded it and gave it a spin (YES THE PUN WAS INTENDED).

Chris, take your time, you are doing us a favor. I love the CD4 interface. It is the look I am going for!


I have just started the hunt for Jukebox software and I am going to put it in an old arcade cabinet. That way, I can put it in line with my other cabs and it will "Flow" in the gameroom / arcade.

If there are any other software I should be looking at... Please let me know. My ultimate dream would be...

            1) The four CD covers on the screen with the song list (AS SEEN IN Wincab)
 
            2) Coin / free play option (As seen in Wincab)

            3) Unlike wincab... I do NOT want to see a mouse pointer

            4) Unlike wincab... I do NOT want to see "on - screen buttons" . I want to use hard buttons on the control panel (there will be no mouse or keyboard available - just the control buttons). These buttons will run through an IPac to the PC. So it would redundant to see the buttons on the screen that may (or may not) match the buttons on the control panel.

              5) The commands to control the juke would be simple keyboard commands and letters. (Clear = c) (select = enter). I have not fooled around with wincab enough yet to see if this is the interface - I assume so.


In short, I want the stripped down version that would act like a jukebox as close as possible. Does an older version of Wincab fit the bill? Is there another package out there?  Hopefully I will be able to document the whole process for the group. 


I have been in some of the other groups on the forum, but I restore old games and don't Mame games. But I think I have found a way to Mame (a juke) and have all of the creative fun everyone else is having!


Chris... Yes, If I end up using your software I will drop you a paypal donation!  ;D
     


I know there is someone out there who  can help!


- Dan Wedding



Title: Question for Chris
Post by: scottie4442 on January 22, 2006, 02:20:06 pm
I really like your software and have been using it for a while, I have a question though.  I would like to setup another jukebox, for my kids to use, and one of the things I would need to do is have it clear the database every so often, they want to be able to have there friend bring in CD/DVD's with mp3 and include them for a party, etc.  I firgured out how to do this in DOS, but I cannot get the new jukebox to run a sound card in DOS, so I am switching to Win98.  I was thinking about having WinCab come up as my shell, but if I need to reread the database, the way I was doing it in DOS was to delete the contents of the data directory, how would I do this in WinCab.  I am not going to run the songs from the harddrive, I am pointing WinCab to the CD/DVD drive to read songs from, works fine just a little slow to setup the jukebox initially.  Ok, I know I have been wordy here, but basically how do I clear the database and reload it in WinCab, do I have to delete the contents of the data directory to do this?

Thanks for the great software and your time,

Scott Adams

p.s. No I am not that Scott Adams, nor the other one either (the Dilbert guy nor the one who wrote the adventure games in the 80's)
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on January 23, 2006, 11:31:33 am
            3) Unlike wincab... I do NOT want to see a mouse pointer
In JUKEBOX.INI, go to the [Display] section and set Mouse=Disabled

Quote
            4) Unlike wincab... I do NOT want to see "on - screen buttons" . I want to use hard buttons on the control panel (there will be no mouse or keyboard available - just the control buttons). These buttons will run through an IPac to the PC. So it would redundant to see the buttons on the screen that may (or may not) match the buttons on the control panel.
This requires a simple modification of the skin file and its background file. I'll see if I can throw together the changes.
Quote
              5) The commands to control the juke would be simple keyboard commands and letters. (Clear = c) (select = enter). I have not fooled around with wincab enough yet to see if this is the interface - I assume so.
Yes.  See controls.ini for the control map and readme.txt for all of the available commands.  If your input keypad (or buttons) have fewer than 10 digits, you'll need to edit the skin file to indicate the number of digits available and whether ot not the zero is available.  I can help you make the changes if this is the case.

Quote
In short, I want the stripped down version that would act like a jukebox as close as possible.
This is exactly what WinCab was designed to do.


--Chris
Title: Re: Question for Chris
Post by: Chris on January 23, 2006, 11:35:10 am
I really like your software and have been using it for a while, I have a question though.  I would like to setup another jukebox, for my kids to use, and one of the things I would need to do is have it clear the database every so often, they want to be able to have there friend bring in CD/DVD's with mp3 and include them for a party, etc.  I firgured out how to do this in DOS, but I cannot get the new jukebox to run a sound card in DOS, so I am switching to Win98.  I was thinking about having WinCab come up as my shell, but if I need to reread the database, the way I was doing it in DOS was to delete the contents of the data directory, how would I do this in WinCab.  I am not going to run the songs from the harddrive, I am pointing WinCab to the CD/DVD drive to read songs from, works fine just a little slow to setup the jukebox initially.  Ok, I know I have been wordy here, but basically how do I clear the database and reload it in WinCab, do I have to delete the contents of the data directory to do this?
You do not need to clear the database; WinCab will verify all of the file locations on startup.  If you do want to clear the database, you can just delete the files in the Data directory.

Note that if you use WinCab as your shell, you will need to set the shut down on exit option (can't remember the actual name of the option right now and I'm at work so I don't have access to it) in jukebox.ini.  Also note that I have done no testing on using WinCab as the shell; it may not work at all.

--Chris
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: cscon115 on January 23, 2006, 09:02:35 pm
Chris,

I love you! 

Well... as much as one guy can love another guy... without a third guy looking at the first two guys with funny look on his face.... ;D


Actually I am just starting the Jukebox. I am really interested in using the happ light up buttons (you know the ones, they cost a small fortune for each one)...

However, "I are an Engineer" and my friend just told me he has 20 Carroll Touch systems for 19" monitors - (no cables, power supplies, no drivers, no guarantee they ever work). So I would have to ohm out the pins and find some drivers and play with it, but I might be able to get some working. If I do... then I have to decide to button or not to button... that is the question.


Any comments? 19" CRT touch screen, or Big Light up buttons on a control panel?


Dan

 

Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on January 23, 2006, 09:09:05 pm
It's worth noting that the touchscreen support only works with Windows XP and DOS right now... if you're using 98 or 2000, I wouldn't suggest the touchscreen....
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: cscon115 on January 24, 2006, 07:38:31 am
Well...

I have tried something I have never done before (I really had no need to up to this point), I started to play with SKINS. Actually, it is not that hard.

Once I figured out the SKN is a text file (not some binary file like Icon files) I started to look it over and it looks pretty easy.

My wife does computer drawings for patents and webpages. So I am having her alter the CD background to remove the buttons and I am messing with the skin file to make it work. As soon as I have a few min to rub together I will finish it up. I will send the background and the skin to Chris. If he wants, he can distribute it.

It is his code and he should have creative control over it.


If all goes well - I hope to start the "Cabinet of Death" this weekend sometime. The "Cabinet of Death" refers to the current condition of the cab, NOT what it is going to be! ;D

Dan
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on January 24, 2006, 08:18:14 am
Once I figured out the SKN is a text file (not some binary file like Icon files) I started to look it over and it looks pretty easy.
Documentation is obviously not one of my strong points.  :)  But there is a small amount, in the skins.txt file in the Docs folder, that explains most of the common skin settings.

Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Zook on January 29, 2006, 09:22:39 am
Just installed DosCab.  I love it!!   Thanks for your hard work.
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: scottie4442 on February 05, 2006, 06:08:57 pm
For the guy that wants a CD screen without buttons, I just uploaded a modified copy of CD4-2.skn and CD2.jpg to Chris, basically there are no on screen buttons and no icons ( I modify this even further in removing the on screen album picture, my kids always have mp3's without album cover pictures so this works better for me).  See if this is what you want.

Scott Adams
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: JustMichael on February 08, 2006, 10:29:09 pm
Any chance of adding the ability to use one font for the song titles and a different font for the artist's name?
Title: Re: Is DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox still alive?
Post by: Chris on February 09, 2006, 11:02:57 am
In fact, the last new code I added was the beginnings of a more flexible font-handling system, which will make it easier for me to add that.

--Chris