Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Anyone ever hear of these?

I see you're getting addicted too.

Note that none of those units are peripherals. And, in addition, they probably run off a dedicated duplication controller board instead of a full blown windows system.

You'd have to lobotomize them to make them into a peripheral robot (disconnect the duplication controller and make the drive and serial ports external).

And of course, you'd need to write a driver for them.

-brendan

[fphredd]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-3-Burner-CD-DVD-200-Disc-Autoloader-Auto-Duplicator_W0QQitemZ120366705296QQihZ002QQcategoryZ31509QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262#contact

Anyone ever hear of these?

or these?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827236078R&Tpk=Spartan%20Max%20D2%20Autoloader

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgzhP6DTImI&eurl=http://cgi.ebay.com/Ily-Spartan-D2-Disk-Autoloader-DVD-CD-Duplicator-NEW-NR_W0QQitemZ220367813471QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Drives

Used 'em?

Thanks!

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Do your current drivers support the Rimage 8100 model duplicators? I believe these are four drive units and are of the Producer family.

Nope, there are no scripts for these at this time.

-brendan

[sredmyer]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Brendan,

Do your current drivers support the Rimage 8100 model duplicators? I believe these are four drive units and are of the Producer family.

Thanks,
Steve

[kretch]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Yes.



I have not tested it, so I do not know.

-brendan

I just tested a G3 I got off of Ebay, and the driver does not work.
Brandan- is there a way of debugging this?

Thanks much
Kretch

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

I contacted them about the dexteris over a year ago and asked what the price was for one of them new. It was far more than I was willing to spend. That's about as far as I got.

-brendan

[CaryB]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Looked through all the posts and didn't see this mentioned.

http://www.dextimus.com/index.html

Anyone have info on this device, and what it will cost, and most importantly, can it be used with this software?

[darkbane]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

@Castor

I'm glad you got your DTP connected.. but this is just the beginning!

In order to have a full working unit, we're still missing:

Some of the serial commands (namely, the command to store the calibration data and the command to inquiry if there is a cd at the picker or not)

A burning software that natively support robots (Prassi PrimoCD for Rimage used to, but I've been unable to make it run, it just crashes for me, but it is very old software anyways)

Great work with the repair of the flat cable: I had tough it would not be possible to repair it but you did it: impressive!

D.

[castor1350]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Darkbane: Awesome guide man. I successfully soldered on my own com port with your instructions and it's working great!

Not sure if anyone else has ribbon cable issues... but I did repair my ribbon cable using 220 grit sandpaper and some tape. I also figured out proper positioning of the ribbon, which is the slack hanging down below the arm, wrapped around the very tiny post of the small metal sliding piece which moves up and down with the tension of the slack).

Thanks again bhoar and Darkbane for all of their hard work!

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Now that I've gotten my kodak kiosks to work, I'm wondering if it's possible to hook up multiple kiosks to one computer?

Yes.

... And also, does anybody know whether the old model (Kiosk G3) will work as well?

I have not tested it, so I do not know.

-brendan

[darkbane]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

UPDATE: I somehow made the rimage drivers work in Windows XP via SCSI: basic arm movement and calibration, and above all, Disc detection. A shame I can't tap in the scsi bus (any idea) to know wich commands are sent to the DTP.
I'll update my guide as soon as there are news!

Daevon

[darkbane]

@Castor

Hi
Sorry for the delay, here's a quick and incomplete guide I wrote to help you and everybody else that has a DTP4000:

Experimental SERIAL port control for SCSI DTP1000/4000
Written by Daevon (ilgrancaliffo -at- hotmail.com)
Version 0.2 18 Feb 2009

1) The HARDWARE
Since the SCSI DTP1000/4000 use a proprietary driver to send commands to the control board and since this driver won't work on machines other than Win 9x, NT4 and Windows 2000, the solutions to continue using it on newer machines are either
- Putting up a windows 2000 machine with a SCSI interface and use the rimage drivers
- connect the serial debug connector on the mainboard to a serial-equipped pc (any OS) and use the drives standalone (either the native scsi ones with a proper controller or newer, even dvd, units, connected with ESATA (preferred), or USB/Firewire to ATA/SATA. This is the way I'm going to cover.

To access the DTP main board you have to slightly unscrew the two screws on the top-right of the unit. Remove the side panel. You'll see the board in the lower left corner, with the scsi cable connected to it.

Looking at the main board, at the top there's an unused 5 pin connector named J13 that looks like this:



J13 5_/////_1



If you're lucky and it is still there, you can re-use the printer cable connector: it goes from the back of the unit (near the 3 scsi ports) to the lower part of the mainboards. It has 6 pins, but it will fit nicely on the serial one.. of course you'll need some basic soldering skill.

Connect the pins this way:


J13 Connector-> Female DB9
1-------------->2
2-------------->3
3-------------->4
4-------------->Not Connected
5-------------->5


Now you should have a working serial connection.

2) THE SOFTWARE
Once you have hooked it, open your favorite terminal program (I suggest PUTTY) and configure it to the appropriate COM port with the following settings:


COMx (The serial port your DTP is connected to)
19200 Speed
8 Bits
N No parity
1 Bit stop
P Hardware parity or no parity at all.


Power on your unit, you should read some (brief) test, like:

Firmware revision 4.0A

The basic commands are:


MD ----> Move Picker all the way down
MDxxx -> where xxx are hex values from 1 to 2000 (dec 1 to 8192) moves the picker downwards by the specified amount eg. MD88C
MU ----> same as MD, but upwards.
MUxxx -> same as MDxxx, but upwards.
MH ----> Moves the picker to the topmost (home) position
OI ----> Open lower drawer (ie, switch to the second position)
CI ----> Close lower drawer
OI ----> Open Reject drawer
CI ----> Close Reject drawer
P -----> Drops the CD (WARNING: ISSUE A "R" IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS! See notes)
R -----> Returns the picker hand to the normal position


(If you happen to discover some other command,like the one that senses it the picker has a disk, please let me know!)

EXAMPLE: To pick up a cd, simply issue an MD command,wait for the arm to reach the lowemost position, then issue an MU200. Your picker should have a cd now!

###You need to wait for each command to complete before issuing the following one, or it will get ignored. Since there are no return codes on the SCSI units, you simply have to look at the unit and wait for the issued command to complete

EXAMPLE: Now try to issue an MH, followed by an OR, P, R, DR.
If everything is working correctly, the CD it has picked before will be dropped in the reject drawer and the drawer will close.


3) MISC FINDINGS
a)The range of the picker seems to be around 6800 (1A90 hex). IE: It will go from 0 (home) to touching the lower cassette if you issue an:

MD1A90

b)The picker is not very precise at all.
ie: if you input:
MDFF
MDFF
MDFF
MDFF
MDFF
MDFF
MDFF
MDFF
MU800
(wich means: go down eight times by 256, then go up by 2048, wich is exactly 256x8) it WON'T return to the same position it started in. It will be close enough tho.

4) THANKS to:
Bhoar (Brendan) at the dbpoweramp forum for the IMMENSE help he gave me: without him this guide would not have been possible.

The guys (and gals!) at the dbpoweramp forum for sharing their findings and wisdom

This guide is an early attemp at reverting an old DTP4000 to functionality. It most likely full of errors, mistakes, misconceptions and so on... please bear with me and if you have more detailed infos.. share them!

Btw, I take absolutely no responsability if your DTP makes an horrible death based on what you did read here..

Now Have fun with your DTP unit!
-Daevon

[kretch]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

... And also, does anybody know whether the old model (Kiosk G3) will work as well?

Thanks much
Kretch

[kretch]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Now that I've gotten my kodak kiosks to work, I'm wondering if it's possible to hook up multiple kiosks to one computer?

Thanks
Kretch

[castor1350]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

darkbane: Congratulations on your success with your DTP unit. I have a few questions for you.

1. I have a DTP-1000 SCSI version and was wondering if you could tell me more about how to hook up my own com port? Or possibly post some pictures of your install?

2. You mentioned you found some drivers/alignment utilities for SCSI and non SCSI versions. Could you point me in the right direction of finding those?

3. I have not burned out my electromagnet, but I am very curious on how you did replace it, just in case I do burn it out someday. Where did you get the electromagnet from? If you got it from another electrical device, I was wondering if you could tell me the model of the device you took it from?

4. I was also wondering if your pictures could include a picture of the ribbon cable that goes up and down with the arm? The other day the ribbon wasn't moving with the robotic arm and ended up snapping in half on me, so I'm going to try and repair the ribbon cable (with sandpaper and tape), but wanted to verify it's correct placement.

Thanks so much.

Castor