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CDPlay Version 1.20S [Shareware Version] March 11, 1992 This program is Copyright 1992 by Randy Rathbun. Turbo C++ is Copyright 1987, 1990 Borland International, Inc. Microsoft CD-ROM extensions Copyright Microsoft, Inc. This program is Shareware. You are granted a trial period of ten (10) days to try it out. If, after this period, you continue to use it, you must register it by sending $10US + $3US for Shipping and handling to Randy Rathbun. See the Order Form at the end of this document for more information. For the most up to date Shareware version of CDPlay, call The Ham Shack BBS at (816)796-6695. 24 Hours, 300/1200/2400 Baud, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit. Disclaimer The author (Randy Rathbun) is not to be held liable for any damages caused by the use or misuse of this program. This pro- gram is provided 'AS-IS' with no warranty, either expressed or implied. Owners of the REGISTERED version of CDPlay are granted a one (1) year warranty on the media in which CDPlay is distributed. Owners of the REGISTERED version must send their original CDPlay disk (+$3US for postage and handling) to Randy Rathbun, 18602 Cheyenne Drive, Independence, MO 64056. Terms of Distribution Since CDPlay is Shareware, you may not sell it. Only the author (Randy Rathbun) may sell the program as a REGISTERED COPY. You may not charge others for this (Shareware) program. It must be given away. Users groups and other commercial interests (Shareware distributors, for example) may charge a small fee for the media on which CDPlay is distributed. This fee may not exceed $5 for magnetic media, and $1000 for optical media. Users groups and commercial interests which distribute CDPlay are encouraged to let me (Randy Rathbun) know that you are distributing CDPlay. We want to know how it is getting around! Introduction CDPlay is a full featured program which will allow your CD- ROM player to play a CD Audio disc. In order for CDPlay (herein referred to as CDP) you need to have the following: - A IBM Compatible computer - A CD-ROM drive capable of audio output - MSCDEX v2.1 or later If you have the items listed above, you are all set to start enjoying CDP! Note: Your CD-ROM device driver MUST support Audio Play- back. We have encountered a few users whose device drivers do not support audio. If CDPlay does not run, check with the drive manufacturer for an updated device driver. Optional equipment: - A Microsoft/Logitech compatible mouse - A Hard drive (although a floppy will work) Version 1.20 Features This version 1.20 of CDPlay corrects a MAJOR bug that was found... just before I sent out a shipment of registered versions (whew!) The problem is in the database. If you look at the database with a binary file viewer, you will see some duplicate records. This has been corrected. You will also see records suddenly get lost! I have no idea how I could have missed this! Some machines will allow you to enter a few hundred records before it starts losing them, others will let you enter about 50. I have no idea why, but it does. Again, this has been corrected. I have also included a small utility program, CDPRPT.EXE which will list the titles of your discs to a text file, DISC- NAME.TXT. This will help you see what CDs you have put in your database. Getting Started In order for CDP to start working, you need to run the program CDPSETUP. This program will write the following files to your system: CONFIG.CDP (8 bytes) CDPDISC.DAT (0 bytes) CDPSONG.DAT (0 bytes) CONFIG.CDP contains startup information for CDP to use. It has a file length of 8 bytes. CDPDISC.DAT and CDPSONG.DAT will both have file sizes of 0 bytes, but don't worry! They don't have any information in them yet. During the running of CDP, you will see two other files appear on your system: CDPDISC.BAK CDPSONG.BAK These are backup files of CDPDISC.DAT and CDPSONG.DAT. They will be discussed a bit later. Now, back to CDPSETUP. You only need to answer one question to get the program up and running. You will be asked is the amount of time for the screen saver to become active. The value you enter is in minutes, from 1 to 30. The screen saver will become active after the number of minutes you specify if there has been no keyboard or mouse button activity. **************************************************************** NOTE: If you are upgrading from a previous version of CDPlay, you DO NOT need to run CDPSETUP. **************************************************************** Running CDPlay To run CDPlay, just type: CDP <Enter> at the DOS prompt. CDP will load and you will soon be greeted with the main program screen. When CDPlay is started, there is a three second delay. Disc information will be displayed on the screen, but it may appear that CDPlay is locked up. It isn't! This delay is neccessary so that the program can see if there is a disc in the drive and if there is, if it is playing. The Database The Database section of CDP is very simple. It allows you to see just what is on a disc, what disc is in the drive, the times of each track, and the disc artist. It also allows you to search your database to find a song. Suppose that you have every disc that the Rolling Stones currently have out, and you want to find out which discs contain the song "Jumpin' Jack Flash". The Search portion of the data- base will tell you. How To Enter A Disc Into The Database Entering a disc into the database couldn't be easier. Just insert a disc into the CD-ROM drive. CDP will check your current database entries for that disc. If CDP cannot find the disc, you will be prompted to enter the disc information. To add the disc, just follow the prompts. You will first be asked to enter the Title Of The Disc. You have 80 characters for each field. As you type, your cursor will move from left to right. When you get to what appears to be the end of the field, the text will start to scroll from right to left. Next, you will be asked to enter the Disc Artist. This is usually a particular singer or group. If the disc is one of the 'CD Samplers' with songs from many artists, it is suggested that you type 'Various' in this field. After you have entered the disc name and artist, you can start entering the title of each track. Again, you have 80 characters to describe each track. If, for some reason, you do not feel like entering all this information, but would like to enter it at a later time, you can. Just press ENTER for each field. The information will be stored in the database this way, but can be changed. See the section entitled 'Editing an Entry' below. Editing An Entry If you find you have made a mistake on an entry, or wish to enter some information which you have previously skipped, you can. First, insert the disc whose database entry you wish to change into the drive. CDP will read the information out of the database and will display it on the screen. Next, press Alt-E or click the mouse on the Edit button. You will be presented with the Entry/Edit screen. You can use the normal cursor control keys to scroll around the fields and change them. If you wish for a field to remain as it is, just hit ENTER to go on to the next field. Searching The Database Searching the database is as easy as entering information into it. Press Alt-S or click the mouse on the Search button. You will now see the Search Query screen. You are asked to enter a song title, or part of a song title. Enter this and press ENTER. The disc title, artist, and song title will be displayed. Press any key to continue searching. For example, say you want to find all songs titles that contain the word 'love' in them. Enter 'love' in the search field. The database will show you all the songs you have entered which have 'love' in the title. Note that the database will also show you songs titles which also have the word 'lovely', 'clove', 'glove', and 'loved'. This is normal. To exit a search at any time, press the ESC key, or press any other key to continue the search. The Player Section Now for the good stuff, the actual disc player! I am assuming you know how to use the mouse by now, so I will not refer to it any more in this document. Just assume that when I say something like "Press the P key" that you can also press the Play/Pause button with the mouse. So go ahead. Press the P key! This is the Play/Pause key. It will start a stopped/paused disc and pause a playing disc. The S key will stop a playing disc. When you press Play, it will start over at the beginning of the disc. The + and - keys will allow you to jump forward or backward one track. If you try to jump forward when listening to the last track, it will be ignored. If you try to jump backward while listening to the first track, it will start over at the beginning of the song. By pressing the < and > keys, you will jump forward or back 10 seconds on the disc. Please note that this is not 10 seconds forward relative to the song, but 10 seconds forward relative to the disc. If you press E, you will eject the disc from the drive. You can also eject the disc by hitting the EJECT button on the front of your CD-ROM drive. The Music Bar In the middle of the screen you will see a line divided into ten sections with arrows on each end. This is the Music Bar. It allows you to jump to different songs on a disc very quickly. You can only use the Music Bar if you have a mouse connected. The Music Bar can show ten track numbers at a time. To select other track numbers, click on the arrows. Clicking on the right arrow will scroll the bar up, clicking on the left arrow will scroll the bar down. When you have a disc playing, just press the button with the mouse and the player will jump to the song you selected. The current track that is playing will flash on the Music Bar, if the track number is displayed. The Q-Channel Information The CD Audio disc Q-Channel information is constantly dis- played on the left side of the Player Interface. Q-Channel information is the time that is encoded on the disc itself. Please note that the times that are displayed do not always look correct, but they are. For example, you might notice that the Elapsed Track Time is somewhere around two (2) seconds behind the Elapsed Disc Time. This is normal. The Q-Channel information is displayed as: Track : (current track playing) Elap. Time: (elapsed Track Time) Song Time: (Time of TRack) Elap. Disc: (Elapsed Disc Time) Total Disc: (Total running time of disc) Status : CD Player status Track shows the current track number that is playing. Elap. Time is the elapsed running time of the currently playing track. Song Time is the total running time of the track. Elap. Disc is the elapsed running time of the currently play disc. Total Disc shows the total running time of the disc. Status shows the current status of the CD player. It will show Playing, Paused, Stopped, or Door Open. Exiting the Program You can exit the program at any time by pressing the F10 key. When you do exit the program, any currently playing disc will continue to play, so that you can continue to listen to music while you use your computer. Note that there is no mouse button available for this. This is intentional - it keeps you from accidentally hitting the mouse button and exiting the program. It had originally been placed in the program, but while programming we kept leaving the program accidentally! Let us know if you would like for this to be included from now on. Regular Maintenance Like all things, in order to keep your program running smoothly, you should perform some regular maintenance on CDPlay. This involves nothing more than backing up four files: CDPDISC.DAT CDPSONG.DAT CDPDISC.BAK CDPSONG.BAK These files are your database. If you loose them, you have to start entering the information all over. Believe me, it has happened to me many times. If, for some reason, your database becomes corrupted, there is only one way to restore it. Delete the files CDPDISC.DAT and CDPSONG.DAT, then run CDPSETUP again. Again, make sure you make backups of the database every so often. If you do not, you will have to re-enter all that infor- mation! Believe me, it is no fun. Copy the files over to a floppy and put it in a safe place. That way, if you accidentally destroy the database, or it becomes corrupted, you can easily restore it. Remember, "The stingy man spends the most!" Closing Comments We hope you receive much enjoyment from using CDPlay. A lot of hard work and effort went into the creation of this program. I would like to thank Dave Perry, W4KGU, and Craig Martin, WA0WPJ, for their help and especially for allowing me to bounce ideas off them. Thanks also go to Frank Gunja, N0FMR, for being a very helpful Beta tester. Fortunately I did not screw up his system! I would also like to thank all the creators of the Commercial CD player programs. If it wasn't for their extremely high priced do nothing programs, I wouldn't have written this one! What's Next? Some things that we are working on now at CDPlay Tower (sorry Click and Clack!) are: - ARTS, the Audio Recording Tape System. Will allow CDPlay to rearrange the sequence of songs so that they fit perfectly on a cassette tape. - CD+G Graphics. Will allow users with a CD+G compatible drive to view lyrics/pictures on CD+G Audio Discs. Note that all drives we have tested so far DO NOT support CD+G. Let's start a letter writing campaign to get them onto the market! - The CDPlay Report System. Will allow you to sort, print, edit, and update your CDPlay database. Will also allow you to import database information from other CDPlay users so you can avoid typing. - CDPlay itself! We are continually working on making CDPlay the best it can be, whether it's making the documentation clearer, fixing bugs, or adding features. We Love Coding! Note that ALL registered users will receive these and any other updates FREE as they become available. The only cost is the nominal $3US shipping and handling fee. Registered users will receive information on updates through the mail. Why Should I Register? This is a very good question, and one that deserves answer- ing. The main reason is that, by registering, you are letting me, the author, know that you enjoy using CDPlay and that you appreciate the hard work and long hours that have gone into making this a great program. By registering, you also receive the LATEST version of CDPlay, plus, as stated above, you also receive FREE UPDATES to the program (there is, however, a $3US Shipping and Handling fee.) Last, but not least, your copy of CDPlay will get rid of the "AnnoyWare" screens. These screens are a pain in the butt, and are necessary. I apologize for them. However, until the day that all users of CDP register the program, they will have to remain in the Shareware version. Again, I do apologize to all you honest users. About the Author Randy Rathbun, NV0U, is a student at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and is majoring in Computer Based Infor- mation Systems. He received his amateur radio license in April 1985 (KA0UMC). Other than computers and ham radio, Randy's hob- bies are home beer/winemaking, listening to blues music, reading science fiction, and stamp collecting. User Notes CDPlay was written in Turbo C++. It was written using a Sony CDU-510 CD-ROM drive, MSCDEX v 2.2, MS-DOS 5.0, and an 8088 IBM Compatible computer. CDPlay should work correctly with ANY CD-ROM drive, provided the driver program manufacturer has stuck with the Microsoft CD ROM Extensions Device Driver specifications. CDPlay does not talk to the drive, like some drive specific programs do, but talks to the CD-ROM extensions which in turn talks with the drive. This makes for a more compatible program. If, after you have tried everything you know of to get the program running, and it still does not work correctly then WRITE US A LETTER! We want to know! Please include the following information to us in your letter: - a printed copy of your AUTOEXEC.BAT file - a printed copy of your CONFIG.SYS file - what version of MSCDEX you are running - what version and what device driver you are using We will try our darndest to help you get the program running. NOTE TO DESKVIEW USERS: We have received a couple of letters saying that CDP does not work correctly under Deskview. Since I am running a 8088, multitasking is out. If you are running CDPlay in DV, and it is working correctly, please let me know. If your answer solves somebody's problem, you will receive a REGISTERED copy of CDP free. Versions Released or Versions We Worked On CDPlay Version Date Changes made 1.20SR 920311 MAJOR BUG FOUND! The way which CDPlay wrote the database meant certain death. This bug has been fixed. Sorry for any problems. 1.12S 920221 Made changes to annoy screen. No longer sits forever. Also cut down on number of times that the screen is displayed. 1.11SR 920216 As usual, I got ahead of myself and did not pay attention to what was being put on the screen. So this version does not do anything differently, it just corrects my failure to read what I wrote in the help screen. Uploaded to Ham Shack BBS only. 1.10SR 920211 Release of updates. 1.05# 920210 Made change to annoyware screens instead of cripple ware. Lowered price to $10. 1.04# 920209 Corrected problem in search routine. Can now exit a search. No longer have to go through every entry. 1.03# 920208 Added Music Bar to screen. Fixed problem with mouse acting too quickly. 1.02a# 920207 Made room in code for password registration. This will not be done until much later (say v1.20 or later). 1.02# 920205 Moved the screen format around to facilitate the new upcoming features. 1.01S 920118 Fixed typo in order screen, along with other small typos. The CDPlay release also contains CDPlay Quick Start. 1.00S 920115 First Shareware Version Released! 0.60B 920111 Fixed bugs (screen) introduced in v0.22B 0.50B 920110 Fixed stop disc function to return to beginning of disc. 0.22B 920107 Released BETA TEST version. Contains fix for initial startup recognition of playing disc. 0.21B 911219 Initial BETA TEST of CD Play 0.01B 910921 Start of CDPlay coding. NOTE: * indicates changes made to CDPSETUP. # indicates version not released. S indicates Shareware version. R indicates Registered version. B indicates Beta version. CD Play Product Order Form Name: __________________________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________________________ City: _____________________________ State: _____________________ Zip: ____________________ Version you are registering _____________ Media type: ________ 3.5" ________ 5.25" ______ units @ __$10__ ea. = _______ + shipping 3.00 TOTAL _______ Send your Check/Money Order payable to Randy Rathbun to: Randy Rathbun 18602 Cheyenne Drive Independence, MO 64056-2082 International orders must be in United States Funds ONLY. Inter- national orders should add $3.00US for increased shipping costs. From where did you receive this program? (if a BBS, list its name/phone number: ______________________________________________ For our use only: PIDNO: ___________________________________________________ TYPE: ________