1. Can I use my own MP3's with the PJB?
2. Can I copy MP3's off the PJB to my comptuer?
3. Can I use <Insert Name Here> encoder to create MP3's to
download to the PJB?
4. Is there any problem with large (40-100mB) MP3's?
5. Is the USB connector a standard type?
6. How do I know that my battery is charged?
7. Doesn't the PJB just charge the battery for a set period of time?
8. Is there something like CheckDisk to test PJB's disk consistency?
9. Is there a way to Defrag all free space on the PJB's hard disk and
optimize the allocation of songs inside it?
10. Is there any way to know what new features will be added to the
firmware or are being worked on ?
11. I am recieving errors. Cannot make changes to the PJB What can I
do?
12. What are all the Button commands for the new firmware (2.3.1)?
13 How do I unistall and reinstall the USB drivers under Windows 2000?
14. If I'm playing music while charging... is it slowing
down the speed of charging?
15. How does the
"Shuffle" order sequence work?
The following applications have been reported to work.
jammer.exe by "The Dobber"
Project: The OpenPJB Project by "Source Forge"
(this feature is under development)
MP3Loader by
"Bob Valentino"
Any standard MP3 (including VBR) should work as long as the
sample rate divides evenly into 44100.
"There shouldn't be. By default, using the Jukebox Manager, entire albums are transmitted to the PJB as one continuous bitstream.
One advantage of using the Jukebox Manager to re-rip your album
files would be that you get a continuous bitstream for the entire album, but also get the
track names and track boundaries in the PJB. So, you can rip that live album or
soundtrack, not have any clicks or pauses between tracks, but still move from track to
track within the album."
"The USB cable is a regular A->B cable. You can pick it up in any computer
store. One of the few advantages to the large size of the PJB :-)."
6. How do I know that my battery is charged?
When the icon goes off, you can safely assume the battery is fully
charged. Doing it again won't have any significant effect, good or bad (unless
you're in California and short of 120V power).
7. Doesn't the PJB just charge the battery for a set period of time?
It's really a whole lot more complicated than that. You don't
just use a timer to recharge a LiIon battery - you have to track the current and
voltage too, and switch appropriately amongst a trickle charge, a fast charge, topping
off, stopped charging, and declaring the battery defective.
The PJB's charging hardware does all of this by itself, without telling the PJB firmware
much of what's going on. In particular, the hardware
doesn't tell the firmware when charging is complete (even though the hardware has stopped
charging the battery).
So the firmware just turns the icon on whenever you connect to wall power, and turns it
off four hours after the start of the main part of the charging cycle, which we know
always gets us to after the end of the charging cycle. (answer provided by: Andrew )
8. Is there something like CheckDisk to test PJB's disk consistency.
There's never any need for a CheckDisk-like program, and this was an
explicit design goal (by people who have designed lots of
industrial-strength file systems). When JBM updates the PJB, there's an atomic
commit point: a single-sector disk write
just after writing the new TOC. If that write fails (or never happens) then the PJB
reverts to the previous version of the TOC, transparently, as if the update had never
happened. (It's important that JBM does at least one TOC commit after deleting
tracks before writing new ones; (answer provided by: Andrew )
9. Is there a way to Defrag all free space on the PJB's hard disk and optimize the allocation of songs inside it?
There's not much need for a defragmenter. The PJB uses 128
KByte allocation blocks, which corresponds to 8 seconds of music at 128
Kb/s. So worst-case fragmentation causes an average of one disk seek every 8
seconds, which isn't a problem. It's possible for
fragmentation to cause an excessive TOC size (since that's where the allocation map
lives), but the combination of how we represent
the map and the allocation algorithm we use make a very large map quite unlikely.
I've certainly never seen one, even on very large
TOC's. (Designing a file system that's exclusively for large files is significantly
easier than designing a general-purpose file system.) (answer provided by: Andrew )
10. Is there any way to know what new features will be added to firmware or are being worked on ?
The shipping PJB-100 product comes from HanGo, under license from
Compaq.But at the moment anyone actively modifying the firmware (like me) works for
Compaq. It would be inappropriate for Compaq people to predict what features will
appear in a HanGo product, even (or perhaps especially) when we have a pretty good idea of
what will happen. So instead, I don't answer when people ask about them.
You'll just have to wait and see.
11. I am recieving errors. Cannot make changes to the PJB What can I do?
The correct thing to do is to request technical support from the
dealer
who sold you the PJB. However ...
CAUION(1): the following involves editing
your Windows registry. It's
quite easy to use a registry editor in such a way that your PC becomes
unusable and you lose all your files. Don't do that. If you're not
comfortable editing the registry, or not willing to take the risk, use
technical support instead.
CAUTION(2): the following reconstructs your PJB's TOC using code
that
hasn't been debugged or used much. If it goes wrong, you might lose all
of the music stored on your PJB.
CAUTION(3): I doubt that this recipe has ever been tested with a
PJB
whose contents were loaded or modified by MP3Loader. If you've been
using MP3Loader, and you try this recipe, you're probably being a
pioneeer, with consequent risk of getting arrows in the back.
This recipe will enable "Test Mode" in the Jukebox manager, and will rebuild the
allocation map section of the TOC by scanning the allocated blocks on disc. It
assumes that the Set/Disc/Track section of the TOC is correct.
1) Be sure that the Jukebox manager software is installed and can
communicate with your PJB.
2) Be sure that the Jukebox manager is NOT running.
3) With your favorite registry editor (e.g. regedit under Windows 98),
navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Personal Jukebox\Jukebox Manager\Settings
4) Create there a new value called "SRC", of type "DWORD", with
value 1
5) Quit from the registry editor, and run the Jukebox Manager. In the Jukebox
Manager, click "Preferences" on the Jukebox menu.
6) In the preferences dialog, use the "Test Mode" tab, check the
"Enable Test Mode" box, then click "OK" to save the change. Your
Jukebox manager now has a "Test" menu.
7) If your PJB isn't already connected and selected in the Jukebox Manager, do
that now.
8) Verify that your PJB has a reasonably fully charged battery,
and/or is connected to an external power source (preferably both).
9) From the Test menu, use "Extract TOC" to make a backup copy of your
PJB's existing TOC (e.g. as c:\mypjb.toc).
10) Finally, click "Rebuild Map" on the Test menu.
This takes quite a long time to run; it's scanning the entire disk. If this runs
successfully, just save the changed TOC in the usual way (click "Save Changes"
on the Jukebox menu).
If it doesn't work, scream and ask for help. The TOC copy that you saved in step (9)
will probably be good enough to let an expert repair things.
I don't recommend trying any of the other options that test mode makes available, and I'm
not likely to help you if you do try them. The "Load TOC" command is
especially dangerous.
Andrew
12. What are all the Button commands for the new firmware (2.3.1)?
PJB Buttons for the main screen (version 2.3.1)
==========================================================================
The buttons on the front panel are called, from top-left anti-clockwise,
"up", "down", "play", "stop", "left" and
"right". There's a slideswitch
and a wheel on the right edge. The wheel can be rotated or clicked.
At power on:
- slideswitch at "locked" = front panel buttons are disabled (wheel isn't)
- For normal power on, press any button or click the wheel.
- To start playing, power on with a short hold on "play" or the wheel.
- To bypass normal firmware start-up and enter flash update mode, power
on while holding "up" and "right".
At any time:
- Hold "play" and "stop" and then click the wheel for hardware reset.
At the main screen:
- slideswitch at "locked" = front panel buttons are disabled (wheel isn't)
- rotate-wheel = change volume
- click-wheel = if playing then pause else play
- click-up = select previous line, if any
- click-down = select next line, if any
- click-play = if playing then pause else play
- click-stop = if not stopped then stop else power off
- click-left = move to previous value in selected line
- click-right = move to next value in selected line
- hold-up = auto-repeat click-up
- hold-down = auto-repeat click-down
- hold-play = enter browse-while-playing mode
- hold-stop = if playing then pause; in any case, power off
- hold-left = if playing then rewind else auto-repeat
- hold-right = if playing then fast-forward else auto-repeat
- hold-up + click-play = games
- hold-up + click-stop = statistics
==========================================================================
13. How do I unistall and reinstall the USB drivers under Windows 2000?
Once you've installed a USB driver in Windows2000, the OS writes
information to a special file and to the registry. The filename and the
registry entries are not known to the installer, so this information can't
be automatically removed on an uninstall. You need to know where all of the
information is to remove it entirely. Here's what I had to do to remove the
OS knowledge of an old USB driver for the PJB:
1. Open the control panel, double click System, click the Device Manager
button, open the Universal Serial Bus controllers section, and delete any
unknown drivers and any Personal Jukebox drivers. Sometimes unknown drivers
show up at the top level. If you see any unknown drivers there, delete them
too.
2. Delete the cpqpjb.inf and cpqpjb.sys files.
3. The PJB driver isn't officially registered with Microsoft. Because of
that, we have to use a special installation process. As a part of this
process, the Windows OS makes a copy of the cpqpjb.inf file and uses its
copy. This is not good, because the Windows OS never picks up any changes
to the .inf file. To install a new .inf file, you'll have to remove the
copy the OS made. All unregistered drivers have to use this installation
procedure, so these .inf clones are numbered, oem1.inf, oem2.inf and so on.
Make sure you delete the one for the pjb - it will have the string cpqpjb
in it.
4. Use regedit to search for any entry in the registry containing the
string cpqpjb. Delete them all. You may get an error message that says that
you can't delete a particular entry. Ignore it. The entry does get deleted.
5. Restart the PC and then try the install again.
I hope this helps,
Jody
14. If I'm playing music while charging... is it slowing down the speed of charging?
Interesting question! My guess:
Probably not. At least if it was, you'd have a hard time measuring
it. One way to think of this is that during normal operation, the
PJB draws only 100 milliamps -- the AC adapter is capable of
supplying at least ten times that amount of current. I don't have
the specs on the battery or the charging circuit handy, but I'd wager
a guess that any difference in charging speed is not something you
could easily measure.
The highest current draw of the PJB is while you're ripping, since
the disk is on (and is writing, which draws more current than
reading) and the USB interface is active. I routinely charge my
batteries while ripping and have not noticed any difference in the
amount of charge the battery has afterwards.
/Mitch.
15. How does the "Shuffle" order sequence work?
"Shuffle" is a permutation, like shuffling a deck
of cards. The TOC entries you have selected are placed in random order, then
each is played exactly once, then the deck is reshuffled. (This is implemented
in the firmware with an array of TOC entries, which is permuted at the start of
the shuffle and then used as the play order.) If you're suspicious of the
shuffle order, you can explore the future and past order by starting play in
shuffle mode, then selecting "track" and holding "Play" to
go into browse-while-play mode. While the screen there says "View Playlist"
you're seeing the tracks in the permuted order in which they will be (or have
been) played. If you use "prev track" in BWP mode to move back to the
start of the shuffle, then you can use "next track" to see each of
your TOC entries (exactly once) in its permuted order. With current firmware
(not some older versions) the shuffle order is preserved across power off and
across pressing stop/play. The order is discarded when you change the selection
of what's to be played (changing set or disc in normal shuffle, or changing set
in shuffle-discs, or changing the "play" line). It's also discarded if
you move out of shuffle mode, or if you modify the TOC. Note however that this
is done in terms of TOC entries, not the music itself. If your selection
includes multiple TOC entries for the same track, then you'll hear that track
multiple times during the shuffle. This behavior isn't likely to get changed.
Andrew