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Win2000 MP3 Player

 

How to install my MP3 Player

First of all you have to choose the hardware.

1. Mainboard

2. Harddisk

3. Soundcard

4. Control

5. Installation

6. Start und Configuration

 

1. Mainboard:

Yes, you can you use an Intel P I 200 or something like that.

But these old P I boards won´t support UDMA Mode and you might get in trouble with harddisks larger than 8,4 GB

You can try the Shuttle Hot-591 P:

- support for P I MMX und AMD K6-II incl. FSB 100

- PS/2 or SDRAM  + 512 KB pip. Burst Cache

- UDMA 33 / USB / AT and ATX power supply

- up to 128 GB hardisk

- 1 x AGP, 3 x PCI and 3 x ISA

- try to get it on Ebay

If you use a 3 x  PCI riser card you can build an VGA- Sound- and Networkcard in a small case.

If you have a large amount of MP3 files I would use a Celeron or Duron board. These boards support UDMA 66 or 100. Loading files will go much faster. You will find the UDMA DOS driver in my installation.

If you have trouble using a harddisk > 8,4 GB with your mainboard try Wim´s Bios Page.

 

2. Harddisk:

I use the IBM/Hitachi IC35L060AVV207-0 (60GB harddisk). You won´t hear it ;-)

 

3. Soundcard:

I recommend the Creative Soundblaster LIVE oder Audigy 1.

You don´t need any drivers. MPXPLAY will detect the card as SBA.

Don´t use the On-Board Soundcard on AMD Boards (VIA Southbridge). Quality is more than bad

Whenever you try to install a different soundcard keep one thing in mind. Forget that card when MPXPLAY detects your soundcard as SBp. Quality will be bad!

 

4. Controlling

You can use an external Keypad (PS/2) or an IRDA receiver. I´ve tried a few IRDA devices. I decided to use this one: IR2PC . The device is working perfect under MS-DOS.

I recommend to use 4x20 display with background light with a HD44780 controller.

 

5. Installation:

Prepare the harddisk:

Use fdisk and format c: /s. I recommend one partition with 800 MB (drive C) and a second partition (drive D). So you have DOS and Windows on drive C. Create a folder MP3 on drive D (d:\ md mp3) and copy all your MP3s files in this folder. I use following directory structure:

d:\mp3 as base directory and than "d:\mp3\artist 1", "d:\mp3\artist 2", "d:\mp3\artist 3" and so on.

Then install Windows98 (e.g. SE if you need USB support). Some DOS soundcard drivers can only be installed from Windows shell. When running Windows you can control your PC with VNC or PCAnywhere and copy new music. I use a USB Wireless LAN card.

Install Windows in this directory: C:\WIN98SE !!! Otherwise you have to edit my msdos.sys, autoexec.bat and config.sys.

Make a backup of the msdos.sys, autoexec.bat and config.sys installed by Windows.

After installing Windows copy my installation on drive c. msdos.sys, autoexec.bat and config.sys will be replaced. So when you restart your computer DOS will start. You can select if you want to start DOS or Windows through the menu in the autoexec.bat. Do this with your keyboard or keypad.

Replace c:\drivers\lcdtext by the english version. You can download it here. Rename it to lcdtext.

My installation will create following folders:

- lcdtext --> text for the LCD display, made for a 20x4 display

- player --> MPXPLAY and MPXT

- drivers --> DOS 7.0 and all driver.

autoexec.bat, config.sys, msdos.sys and win98das.bat in the root directory c:\

By executing win98das.bat you can back up your Windows installation from c:\win98se to C:\winbkup via xcopy32. But you have to start Windows before!

When you start the MP3 player you can recover the back up from the menu.

 

6. Start und configuration:

When you start the MP3 Player you will see the menu:

1. MP3 Player
2. Windows Start
3. Windows Recovery
4. DOS Shell

Wait 3 seconds or press "1" and the MP3 Player starts. First starts the TSR of MPXT, which controlls the LCD output, this software will stay in memory. Than start MPXT. Close MPXT per "insert" and start mpxplay: "mpxplay -sct" (from the directory C:\player).

-sct will check the soundcard. If mpxplay found your soundcard you can start the next test by executing: "mpxplay d:\mp3\*.*\ ". This command should play all files in this directory.

You control MPXT and MPXPLAY as followed:

MPXT:
Num Lock On!
8 = scroll up
2 = scroll down
3 = skip 10 ahead in playlist menu
1 = skip 10 back in playlist menu
Enter = enter
Entf/del = escape

MPXPLAY:
Num Lock Off!
8 = next album
2 = previous album
6 = next track
4 = previous track
- = stop song
+ = play/pause
Entf/del = Exit and shutdown (ATX) PC
Einfg/insert = exit to MPXT
* = volume up 
/ = volume down 

 

You have to edit the mpxt.cfg like this

[Player Settings]

; Path and filename for MPXPlay
Player=c:\player\mpxplay.exe
; Path for Databases used by MPXF/MpXT only (*.M3D)
DatabaseDir=.\
; Path for Playlists (*.M3U)
PlaylistDir=D:\mp3\

 

Change the  mpxtlcd.cfg if you don´t have a 20 x 4 LCD on LPT 1:

[LCD Settings]
LCD=LPTLCD
LCDLines=4
LCDLength=20

 

If you have a 20x4 LCD you don´t have to make any changes:

[Line1]
;Artist
LineAValue=9
LineATime=0
LineAScroll=FALSE

[Line2]
;Album
LineAValue=11
LineATime=0
LineAScroll=True

[Line3]
;Song
LineAValue=10
LineATime=0
LineAScroll=TRUE

[Line4]
LineAValue=%eda %t24
LineATime=100
LineAScroll=FALSE

LineBValue=No. %m3u whole
LineBTime=100
LineBScroll=TRUE

LineCValue=%brt %mtr
LineCTime=100
LineCScroll=FALSE

[Line1]= 1. display line [Line2] = 2. display line ...

LineA Value: What is shown on this Line (LineA=First Line)

LineATime: When it should chaneg to the other Value (LineBValue, LineCValue...)

LineAScroll: scrolling or not? Set to True or False

If you make any changes to the mpxttsr.cfg you have to reboot your PC.

 

Have a closer look to the mpxttsr.cfg if you want to change anything.

You can control MPXT and MPXPLAY with a numeric external keypad. I recommend to use PS/2 modell. Some USB models won´t change from num lock on to num lock off.

MPXT:
Num Lock On!
8 = scroll up
2 = scroll down
3 = skip 10 ahead in playlist menu
1 = skip 10 back in playlist menu
Enter = enter
Entf/del = escape

MPXPLAY:
Num Lock Off!
8 = next album
2 = previous album
6 = next track
4 = previous track
- = stop song
+ = play/pause
Entf/del = Exit and shutdown (ATX) PC
Einfg/insert = exit to MPXT
* = volume up
/ = volume down

But you can also control your MP3 player by using an IRDA device.

The easiest way is by using IRDOS. How to use IRDOS is described in the irdos.txt

Edit mpxt.cfg like this:

UseIR=False
UseX10=False
UseInMPXPlay=False
Comport=1
; Filenames for IR config
;MPXF=mpxt.ir
;MPXPlay=mpxplay.ir

 

More comfortable but more  complex is the IRDA configuration of  MPXPLAY instead of IRDOS .

First start DOSIR2PC.EXE from the directory c:\drivers\DOSIR2PC by: DOSIR2PC 1 L. DOSIR2PC will start to learn now. Please write down which buttons you learn, otherwise you´ll get confused. After that you won´t need this software anymore. After learning the codes you´ll find the file IR2PC.dat in the directory c:\drivers\DOSIR2PC. Open this file with an editor:

00 53 04 fb 38 c7 00 00
2b 4e 04 fb 3a c5 00 00
00 48 04 fb d8 27 00 00
00 50 04 fb 18 e7 00 00
00 4b 04 fb 98 67 00 00
00 4d 04 fb 9a 65 00 00
2d 4a 04 fb 8a 75 00 00
00 4f 04 fb a8 57 00 00
00 47 04 fb aa 55 00 00
$

Have a look at the first line: 00 53 04 fb 38 c7 00 00

0053 is the code of the first keyboard button you´ve pressed while learning.

04 fb 38 c7 00 00 is the code of your remote control.

Copy these codes to the mpxplay.ini:

[serialport]
SerialEnable =1 ; - enable serial control with this
HandlerCFG =UIR,COM1,9600,6 ; - configure a handler
SerialFunc =04fb38c70000,5300 ; ESCAPE - entf Num Block
SerialFunc =04fb3ac50000,4e2b ; '+' PLAY
SerialFunc =04fbd8270000,4800 ; '8' skip back (Track)
SerialFunc =04fb18e70000,5000 ; '2' skip to next (Track)
SerialFunc =04fb98670000,4b00 ; 4 step to previous album
SerialFunc =04fb9a650000,4d00 ; 6 step to next album
SerialFunc =04fb8a750000,4a2d ; '-' STOP
SerialFunc =04fba8570000,4f00 ; '1' Volume down
SerialFunc =04fbaa550000,4700 ; '7' Volume up

But take care with the keyboard codes: you have to switch 00 and 53 from 0053 to 5300.

You can also find the keyboard codes in the KEYCODES.LST in the directory Drivers\MPX Doc.

The IRDA control should work now for MPXPLAY. But there´s one blemish. The IRDA control only works with MPXPLAY at the moment, not with MPXT. The developer of MPXT is working on that bug:

[Quote:] Known issues:
IR seems to work ok while MpXT is running, but it's still kind of hit-and-miss while MPXPlay is running. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...I haven't been able to find a definite pattern to it yet.
 

The next step is to create the database. Start MPXT and run the database menu to add all files from drive d:

When you now start MPXT via "Play Search" and "Play Database" MPXT will play all your files in the database. You can e.g. switch from one track to another or from one album to the next etc.

Now you can sort and configure your playlists in the directory D:\mp3. I´ve sorted my albums like this:

D:\mp3\ABBA\

D:\mp3\Ace of Base\

etc.

My m3u playlists are in the directory mp3. So the path in the playlist is:: D:\mp3\Ace of Base\song 1.mp3 etc. You can easily create the playlists with MP3Tag.

Fileinfo.cfg (C:\Player) needs following syntax if you want use m3u playlists:

ANASTA~1.m3u=Anastacia - Anastacia
ANASTA~2.m3u=Anastacia - Freak Of Nature
ANASTA~3.m3u=Anastacia - Not That Kind
AVRILL~1.m3u=Avril Lavigne - 454SS

It´s a helly job to write down all short file names, but you can use the freeware DirReader to create a file list with long and short file names.
Copy the m3u files under plain Dos in another directory to create short named files.
Start Windows, start DirReader and make a filelist with DirReader of the short and the long filenames
Copy them to Excel and save it as a txt file and copy them to the the cfg and you´re ready.
Takes 15 minutes ;-)
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