Welp had our first party/gathering and Freebox lasted all day and the que had 257 songs in it at one time that I noticed. Its cool, however selecting a song and waiting 3hours to hear it was well odd and cool at the sametime. Randomize the que was set, but man just kept playing and playing.
Good job Barcrest. Your app was definately the life of the party. If/when I get a few more bucks I'll throw it your way just for the shear sake of it. Heck I even had a Microsoft employee there and he said he normally uses Media player for his needs and well hes going to give your app a looksee, but said he cant use it at work. hahahahaha
The only problem I had was somebody saying "Hey since we now have tunes we need to have all of our parties here." NOOOOOOOOOOoO, go home. ;)
Excellent dude... Party on!
Hi Barry and Kizer
I can add that my test machine is running now for about 45 days in a pub. It runs 14 hours a day, 7 days a week and it plays 96.4 % of that time (no bull....) and it works perpectly. I am now so confident with it that I'll be removing the backup machine this week from the pub. It,s awesome. If that isn't a testament to a great programme I don't know what is.
Well done Barry. If the donators can only realize what a great programme this is, they'll know it is a bargain.I've seen a lot of jukebox software, tried it and bought it but I couldn't get any of it to do what freebox does. I'm a commercial operator and have been in the industry for many years. I know what I'm talking about, I've seen it all.
So, thanks again Barry.
Coffee
Have any pics?
Hi Squirrellydw
I'll post some as soon as my new site is finished.
Hey thanks for the testiment coffee... And well done getting it all set up and working. Looking forward to the pics man.
I would of taken some pictures of people around my Juke, but I was on the couch with a bum ankle. :-\
Coffee what OS are you using?
I running W2K and have 4 units running 24/7.If I cue up loads of songs they run with no problem but if I let them in auto play they seem to just mysteriously crash.I cant seem to pin point it to any particular song and I have a buddy who says his will crash from time to time as well.Any idea's?
Barry built me a distro to log the mp3 files becuase I thought maybe it was a trying to play a corrupt file, but that is not the case.Im clueless ???
Fish
Hi Jonfinpausa
Sorry, I was away for 2 days. Let's see, I'm using XP on my units. I had an older test unit also running with XP. On this unit I had the same problem as you mentioned. It ran with 128mb ram and the board was a bit old as well. On the new units I used a minimum of 512mb ram with the latest motherboards that I could find and this is what I have in a pub and it's not doing that sort of thing.
I only had the problem when videos where playing and say you scroll through the albums at the same time.
Your problem may be totally different from mine but try and find out if you get some kind of pattern with the problem and try to isolate it.
I hope you'll get it sorted. I think we should get a tips section on the forum where we could post a question with a anser to it. A lot of the questions on the forum I struggled with myself but I just can't remember what the solution where. By posting it on the forum other users can avoid it or get it sorted faster.
Coffee
If I had a list of questions and answeres I'd create a FAQ section on the manual and as well on the forum.
I personally run Win2000
1ghz processor
512meg ram
Generic motherboard
12gig OS drive
250gig MP3 drive
160gig backup MP3 drive
Ive yet to have mine crash while running.
This is a thread I have running and its on my list of things to do or try to do.
http://www.freeboxjukebox.com/Forums/index.php?topic=25.15
OK the main difference I see is my 4 test boxes only have 256 megs of ram, they are all intel mother boards with at least 1.2GHZ Processors.My mp3 library is also located on a linux server with a samba share and a mapped drive in the windos 2k OS.I dont think the network link is the issue becuase I can duplicate the problem by placing the mp3 libray on the local computer Hard Drive.
I have a new test bed running now on a Dell Optiplex GL520 with 512 megs of ram running win2k.
Lets see what happens.
So do you think its better to run win2k instead of XP?
Personally I think the differences in Os between XP and 2K mean anything since they are so close. I had a bug in one of my files long time ago that would stall Freebox and it would run odd for some reason. If I recall it had some funky characters in the file name.
I did at one time store all my MP3s on a BSD server running Samba and a mapped drive on a XP machine and a Windows2K machine and and both machines ran fine without a problem. I do remember having a file with the funky characters in the file name gave Freebox a hiccup. Hiccup meaning the app would just stop or it would shut it down like it errored out. It happend on both machines and its how I tracked it down. I think there might of been either a * or a / in the file name. I don't really remember thou.
I have to agree with Kizer, I have not relized any difference in the two OS's
However I have not scene the XP box crash in random play yet either.But it does have 512 megs of RAM
Things that make you go Hrmmmmm... ::)
I know the newest version of Freebox uses around 45-51meg of ram. Depending on your OS it could be killing you if your using 128-256 meg of ram.
I think when Im running freebox, defragging my machine and something else Im using easily 300+ meg of ram. If I could dump 1gig of ram into my old machine I would. Might not need it, but the prices of ram lately its to easy to throw a few bucks at it.
Also keep in mind that XP naturally uses more ram because of the OS
I am using a modified version of MINI XP
MNI XP is a hacked version of WIndows Xp with minimal components= very small & very fast
IT has been modified by me to boot directly into freebox instead of explorer
IT has also been modified to Display a cool splash screen at boot instead of the XP logo
After performing My modifications I also removed the hardware profile & Created a ghost image
this allows me to deploy this miniature XP image to any PCs hard drive upon booting first it detects hardware and allows you to install drivers.
After that you got a customized Freebox Netcat PC
hey netcat
I have been playing arround with nlite trying to build a embedded system like you described. Is that what you are using or is there something better? How do you achieve the shell loading Freebox instead of the system shell?
Woody
Nope. am using MINI XP look for it in torrents
as for replacing the shell use regedit and modify
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Shell"="Explorer.exe"
when yo uneed to do something else you can always ctrl-alt-delete
select task manager
clict: START
click: RUN
you can type commands like: control, explorer, cmd etc to perform different functions, i tried implementing a web page with certain buttons to click for freebox, control panel, explorer etc, but because of the embeded security in IE he doesnt work nicely.
other alternative is the frontend someone in the freebox community was developing but I am not sure how far they got and I havent had time to play with it.
for more info please feel free to email me: tony@780tech.com
Thanks netcat I"ll give it a try.
Woody
Hey Netcat,
I would love to have an Lite XP OS, where to get it ?
Fish
I got it from www.hashhu.com (they are no longer around)
look under Imesh, kazaa or torrents
Please keep all discussions on the form legal please... ;)
My apologies everybody interested in this subject just email me
tony@780tech.com
Sorry Barry,
I thought it was a reg hack. No Problem Bro
Everyone interested in lite os
If you are looking to make a mini OS you can do this easily and legally if you have your origional cd/dvd using nLite (http://www.nliteos.com/). I have used it and it works very well, you must have the drivers for for your motherboard and any other assys. attached. It will allow you to strip out all of the unnecessary drivers, help files, and bloat that is built into Windows. It really speeds up the boot / shutdown time and it is FREE. I originally questioned this mini os post and I would bet it is a copy of windows built by nLite, the info on replacing the shell was my real interest.
Sorry / Thanks
Woody
No worries guys, i am no net nazi... But after BOSE coming the heavy mob i didn't want to be closed down again.
Hey Woody, how did you make out with the shell replacement?
Thats what I want to do to.I have all legal OS I just never want to see the desktop or windows stuff.
Did the reg hack work and can you post what you use if it did ?
Any pics of your jukebox yet?
yeah check out here
http://www.freeboxjukebox.com/Forums/index.php?topic=107.0
Ill be posting more soon
Jonfin,
I haven't had time to get to it yet, I'll let you know how it worked when I do.
Woody