Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

[EliC]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Brendan, did you ever get your composermax? I am waiting for a new serial cable. Primera talked me into trying a new cable before buying a new board, though I will be shocked if the cable is actually the problem. I figure since the robotics all seem to work fine and respond correctly the the front panel buttons, and the disc drives all work the only thing left is the main board.

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Just a check-in... Any plans for Plasmon D120 support?

I'd love to get rid of this PointSoft stuff and go with a "one software" package rip->encode setup. :D

I doubt spoon has plans to write device-specific drivers for industrial medium changers.

On the off-chance, it might be worth trying to see if the Sony XL1B driver works? The sony and the plasmon are both medium changer devices and the whole idea of this device class was to abstract all the IO calls to make them all work almost the same. Of course, Powerfile and Sony deviated a bit from the standard (as do most medium changer manufacturers) so sometimes one set of code works for your equipment, sometimes some tweaks are required.

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Brendan, did you ever get your composermax? I am waiting for a new serial cable. Primera talked me into trying a new cable before buying a new board, though I will be shocked if the cable is actually the problem. I figure since the robotics all seem to work fine and respond correctly the the front panel buttons, and the disc drives all work the only thing left is the main board.

No, still waiting for mine to arrive. I ended up having to pay $200 shipping, instead of the $50 on the original invoice (annoying because it only put me over my "limit" after I'd paid the initial auction payment).

So, I guess they're still working out the freight details? It's been over a week since we worked it all out, I should give them a call.

-brendan

[stevek1006]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

So now that batch has gone final I am seriously considering buying a small auto loader to re-rip ~4000 cds to FLAC. Does anyone have any recommendations or thoughts. I am currently thinking about either the Baxter or the MicroOrbit. The MicroOrbit looks nice because of the fewer moving parts and and the higher capacity (50 vs 25). I am fairly ignorant about auto loaders, am certainly open to any other suggestions. Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-Steve

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

So now that batch has gone final I am seriously considering buying a small auto loader to re-rip ~4000 cds to FLAC. Does anyone have any recommendations or thoughts. I am currently thinking about either the Baxter or the MicroOrbit. The MicroOrbit looks nice because of the fewer moving parts and and the higher capacity (50 vs 25). I am fairly ignorant about auto loaders, am certainly open to any other suggestions. Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

For batch ripper used, I'd recommend unit in the following order if used in good working condition or new (recommendation weighs disc capacity and multiple drives heavily, otherwise I'd push the 100-disc composer units down a bit in the list):

1. Primera Composer Pro: 100 discs, two drives. Mechanism isn't fast as others (and can be a bit finicky), but having two drives is a definite bonus. Preferably a firewire, not SCSI model, as the latter requires you building in firewire/USB interfaces yourself and is also likely to be pretty ancient (older = more chance the unit has had a long hard life). Includes input, output and reject locations. Primera Composer family units (applies to similar units below) often show up in untrustworthy condition on ebay so only spring for it if it is guaranteed in good working order.

2. Primera Composer XL. 100 discs, but only one drive. Otherwise just like Composer Pro.

3. Discmakers Elite Micro, Discmakers Micro Ultra, Amtren Flexwriter 1 (I?), Ripstation 7601X. All the same unit hardware-wise. Depending on generation, this may be a 60-disc or more rarely a 75-disc unit, with one drive. Includes input, output and reject locations. Some used units may need the controller-to-arm cable replaced if there are transient open connections causing disc drops (relatively easy to do, it's heavy duty telephone cable). With that said, mechanism is less finicky than Composer family units. Input bin spikes can be moved on some units to accommodate a stack of mini-cds. A true classic.

4. Kodak Kiosk or Microboards MicroOrbit. These are also built like a tank (e.g. the Kodak Kiosk unit is perfect for retail use, unlike any other robots mentioned). Some reports of extra-thick discs (e.g. non-standard dual sided disc with DVD on one side and CD on the other) causing the units to get stuck.

4a. Kodak Kiosk unit based on Microboards MicroOrbit design.
A 50-disc unit. Only one output pile option, so Rejects and Unloads both go into the same pile. Comes wired with a USB to serial and USB to IDE bridge so no hardware tweaking necessary. Hard to come by (these are always retail operation surplus units), I can ask around to my sources if you are interested.

4b. Microboards MicroOrbit. As above, but instead of being wired for use as a computer peripheral it comes as an integrated duplicator without any IO intefaces, you would need to open it up, gut it a bit and/or bypass the duplication controller and install your own USB to IDE bridge (and potentially a USB to serial converter). If you're not interested in wiring your own serial cable and breaking the duplicator functionality, then look for the Kodak unit above instead.

5. Primera Composer. 50 discs, one drive. Otherwise just like Composer Pro.

6. MF-Digital Baxter aka Datatronics Minicubis (the OEM for all of them) aka Mediatechnics Fusion X aka Acronova DupliQ aka Discmakers Pico aka Ripstation 7601, etc. A bit limited: only 25 discs per load, unit is a bit fragile and due to driver limitations, only one connected to a computer at a time. On the plus side, it does have a separate output space for Rejects, but unfortunately it drops them "over the back shoulder" which isn't nice for precious CDs. Only unit that can handle both mini-cds and business-card cds out of the box.

---

There are some newer units out there that I might investigate if they start appearing at drastically cut prices on ebay (discmakers forte or aleratec roboracer), but I cannot recommend them now because a) I don't know if they are "serial controlled" which my driver set requires and b) if they are, a driver script would need to be written.

-brendan

PS - keep in mind that as it stands right now, R13 does not support C2 over firewire and many of the above come configured for firewire. Hopefully R13.1 may resolve this, spoon says he's working on the issue.

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

No, still waiting for mine to arrive. I ended up having to pay $200 shipping, instead of the $50 on the original invoice (annoying because it only put me over my "limit" after I'd paid the initial auction payment).

So, I guess they're still working out the freight details? It's been over a week since we worked it all out, I should give them a call.

As per the other thread, the composer max arrived and the driver is now in a working state. Please see the Batch Ripper initial post if you wish to acquire the driver for the composer max.

-brendan

[Spoon]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

>does have a separate output space for Rejects, but unfortunately it drops them "over the back shoulder" which isn't nice for precious CDs

You could put a bin next to the table so they go straight into the trash

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

>does have a separate output space for Rejects, but unfortunately it drops them "over the back shoulder" which isn't nice for precious CDs

You could put a bin next to the table so they go straight into the trash

Heh. That is probably what the original designers thought as well, since it was engineered as a duplicator - rejects *are* trash.

Of course, you could coat the area behind the arm with felt to lessen the potential scratchiness of the over-the-shoulder reject style. I never did, since my first run through my own (small) collection was with a dupliq a couple years back (with riptastic and a custom loader batch file) and I hadn't thought about the handling issue.

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

1. One of the nice things about the Batch Ripper is that it "farms out" all automation duties to plug-in drivers on a drive-by-drive basis. This allows you to mix and match automation devices. I've already shown my drivers (ULCLI based) operating two robots from two different manufacturers in parallel.

But even if you only have one robot, you can benefit from this. For example, spoon has elsewhere posted the PX-230a drives are good for trying to recover data from difficult discs, while PX-708 drives may be a better all-purpose drive. So, fill a 4-drive robot with PX-708 drives, configure them with the robot, and then attach one or two PX-230a drives as manually loaded drives. Configure them accordingly. When you launch the batch ripper, enable all five or six drives.

During the batch, you can check every hour or so and extract rejected discs (clean them if necessary) and load them into the manual-load PX-230a drives *while the batch is running*.

2. Another benefit of the batch ripper approach is that it doesn't care how many drives you assign to a particular robot, even if the robot is not expandable. This gave me an idea of something to try. For example, say you have a one-drive robot* like the Amtren Flexwriter I (aka Discmakers Elite Micro/Micro Ultra aka Ripstation 7601X) and you also have a two or four drive manual load external "tower". Assuming you could position the two units just right, the drives present opened trays with proper load/unload clearance, and you removed the tray-end if necessary, you might be able to get the one-drive robot to reliably also work the tower drives, not just the built in drive! That one drive robot becomes a three or five drive robot...

Note that I have not tried this yet. Some device firmware "cares" about what tray height it encounters the drive tray at, but based on some experiments earlier this year I think this particular one-drive robot (amtren/discmakers/7601x) would work.

3. Similar to #2 above, but dealing with robots that care about tray height (Primera Composer, Composer XL, Composer Pro), you'd have to limit yourself to placing a drive/drives right at the same pick location as the drive(s) in the unit, but facing opposite the unit's drive(s). An additional concern would be that you'd also need to immobilize the external drive, since it wouldn't be in a massive tower and would be easy to jostle out of alignment. Still you could double the drive number (two for Composer/Composer XL, four for Composer Pro).

-brendan

* the baxter/minicubis/pico/dupliq/7601(no x) units not included due to the different API (not ulcli).

[EliC]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

You could always add a 5th drive to the composermax at the cd printer position. The robot does not know or care if its a printer or a cd drive.

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

You could always add a 5th drive to the composermax at the cd printer position. The robot does not know or care if its a printer or a cd drive.

Yes, if you place the drive at the right height properly...but in this case you might also need to adjust the command line scripting to support it, since it isn't in a normal drive position. I don't think it would require any code changes to the ULCLI, as long as you weren't planning to use multiple drivebank= values (code is currently limited to 1 and 2) and set drivebank=1 for all drives (since the printer position interferes with both banks).

[stevek1006]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

For batch ripper used, I'd recommend unit in the following order ...

Brendan: Thanks for the information, it is extremely helpful. A couple of quick questions. For those devices that do not have a reject pile, I assume the batch ripper will produce a report so that I can easily determine which discs were rejected. Second, concerning the Baxter, I assume it would be relatively easy to build something to safely catch the rejects if I ended up going the route. Thanks again.

-Steve

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Brendan: Thanks for the information, it is extremely helpful. A couple of quick questions. For those devices that do not have a reject pile, I assume the batch ripper will produce a report so that I can easily determine which discs were rejected.

Yes.

Second, concerning the Baxter, I assume it would be relatively easy to build something to safely catch the rejects if I ended up going the route.

Yes. I'd probably just cut up an old t-shirt to fit the reject drop area on the baxter-type unit as well as the table area next to it and affix it to the unit.

-brendan

[stevek1006]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Yes. I'd probably just cut up an old t-shirt to fit the reject drop area on the baxter-type unit as well as the table area next to it and affix it to the unit.

I got my hands on an Acronova DupliQ. It works pretty well. I attached a thin piece of foam just above the output tray edge and used your t-shirt idea to make a little slide where they land on another piece of foam. So far, so good.

My only complaint is that the Pioneer drive seems to have difficulty reading discs. I get a lot of "Secure (warning)" messages on discs that have no problems with my desktop setup. I may try to swap the drive later today and see if that helps. Otherwise, the batch ripper is the greatest thing since sliced bread!!!

Thanks again, Brendan & Spoon!

-Steve

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

I got my hands on an Acronova DupliQ. It works pretty well. I attached a thin piece of foam just above the output tray edge and used your t-shirt idea to make a little slide where they land on another piece of foam. So far, so good.

My only complaint is that the Pioneer drive seems to have difficulty reading discs. I get a lot of "Secure (warning)" messages on discs that have no problems with my desktop setup. I may try to swap the drive later today and see if that helps. Otherwise, the batch ripper is the greatest thing since sliced bread!!!

Thanks again, Brendan & Spoon!

You're quite welcome (well for the advice part which was my contribution ).

I seem to recall that spoon said pioneer drives don't have very good C2 support, perhaps that's what you're seeing?

As usual with drive replacements, make sure you're going to be able to put the original drive back in correctly positioned, just in case. And also make sure to dremel or cut down any of the little disc-holding-clips in the tray, they can interfer with picks and places.

If you plan to use the duplicator for the original purposes, some duplication software (if you use it) will ignore drives not on a whitelist, though this probably isn't an issue for the dupliq as it uses Nero IIRC. e.g. I replaced a dead Pioneer with a Hitachi drive in a six-drive mediatechnics duplicator robot, which works fine for testing, but the mf-digital scribe software ignores that replacement drive.

-brendan