[Mj-tools-devel] Re: GUI for MiniJam software

[Bob M. <mce...@dr...>]

Ste...@ma... [Ste...@ma...] wrote:
>=20
> Hello again Bob;
> Are you a student at the University Wisconsin or a teacher?

I'm a graduate student, working on my Ph.D. in theoretical high-energy part=
icle
physics/phenomenology.  I have been a TA for many courses though.  But
thankfully I'm done with that.  Just research from now on until I graduate.=
  ;)

> Thanks for your feedback, I am definitely going to look into this a lot
> further because I am very interested. I will try to use the application a
> lot more and will let you know the troubles I have (if I have any). I know
> I still have a lot to learn about how your software and the communication
> works.

Great!  I'm sure there are a few bugs lurking.

> I currently got as a engagement gift, the Visor Prism which has a
> rechargeable battery. I understand your pain with the batteries because t=
he
> MiniJam uses a lot, you cannot imagine how much the colour monitor takes!

You'd think with these fancy 0.18 micron processes, and OLED displays, soon
there will be portables on the market that work for a month continuously on=
 one
battery.  Anyway, I've got my fingers crossed.

Do you like the prism?  Can you use it with the minijam reliably?  I imagine
you recharge it every night, right?  That way as long as you don't play mus=
ic
for more than ~2 hours per day, it will never run dead.

With the Visor Deluxe, changing the batteries every day isn't really practi=
cal
(I even have NiMH rechargables).  There's a small but finite probability th=
at
when you remove and replace the batteries, you don't do it fast enough, or =
the
contacts aren't made just right, and it will lose all its memory contents.
Which sucks.

If I use it every day, I have to reinstall everything on it about twice a
month.

> On my own time, in the next week or two I will look into your software and
> talk with the boys at Innogear to find out their stand on Linux with their
> product and I will see what I will come up with.=20

Don't bother.  I had lengthy communications with them, and while they were
initially open to the idea, they wanted me to sign an NDA and agree not to
distribute the source.  So instead I reverse engineered it, only to find an
ABSOLUTELY BRAIN-DEAD filesystem on the mmc.  A monkey could have done bett=
er.
These digital cameras use a DOS FAT filesystem on the mmc.  That would have
been 1000 times smarter, and would have made it a lot easier for 3rd partie=
s to
write software.  With my digital camera I just pop it in, 'mount' it like a
filesystem and use unix 'cp' to get files off it.  It's beautiful.

The format of the MMC is laid out in the 3 structs in mjmmc.h.  Most of the
data fields have been discovered.  Ideally though, a GUI would just call the
mjmmc program, rather than subsuming its code.

If you want to transfer songs over the USB cradle, you'll have to ask Arnim,
since he reverse-engineered the communications protocol it uses.  (mj-xfer
program)

> I do want to get some sort
> of application working because I have to dual boot with windows98 just to
> copy files which I think is absolutely stupid. I want to completely wipe
> out windows from my hard drive.
> thanks for the support and I know for sure I will be emailing you a
> lot..... I guess I will always use this address?
> I think it would be better if you use my home email address
> (st...@or...) because I will do all this "work" on the MiniJam
> from home. (I can check my email from work though)

Please join the mj-tools-devel mailing list (from the sourceforge project
page), and we can communicate through that.  (and in addition, Arnim and an=
yone
else interested can see your ideas)

Cheers,
-- Bob

Bob McElrath (rsm...@st...)=20
Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Physics