Meeting Pearls 3/Meeting_Pearls_III.iso/Pearls/cdrom/Misc/CDToolbox/ReadMe

Text File | 1995-04-20 | 9KB | 209 lines

CDToolbox - another oscillating Blender Software (BS) production
----------------------------------------------------------------

Here are a load of freely distributable commands for CD drives controlled by
cd.device. Anything that can run AmigaDOS commands (eg. Scala, ARexx program,
or a script) can fully control the CD drive (although not through a serial or
parallel link, unless you use something like DNet which allows you to execute
commands on another computer).

All the programs work on the CD32. They should also work on CD drives with
some kind of CD32 emulator, if the emulator's programmed properly.


Installing
----------

Just copy or drag all the commands from the C drawer in this archive to your
C: drawer, or some other drawer you've got set aside for programs.


Options
-------

Each command needs options given in the normal way (like the commands you
find in the C: drawer such as Copy or Rename). All the options for each
command are listed with each command a bit further down. If you're not sure
about all this /FISH business then...

    - /A    Means you've got to use this option.
    - /N    Means the option expects a number.
    - /S    Means the option is a switch. Type the option's name on its
        own to get it working or miss out the name to disable it.

If there's no /N and there's no /S, it's a string.

If you don't give any options (ie. you just type the command's name on its
own) then the command does whatever the default says on the right hand side.

Most of the commands have a CHECK option. If you give this, you'll get a one
word description of what's happening at the moment. Also for script or ARexx
freaks it returns WARN (return code 5) for DOUBLE, ON, OPEN, etc...


Drive commands
--------------

- CDDoor CHECK/S,CLOSE/S,OPEN/S                Default: OPEN
  Open or close the drive door. If you haven't got a motorised drive door, it
  doesn't do a lot.

- CDInfo CHECK/S,STATUS/S,TOC/S                Default: STATUS & TOC
  Spews out more info than anyone could possibly need. STATUS shows the drive
  status and TOC lists the contents of the CD. If you give CHECK instead, it
  tests if a CD is in the drive.

- CDMotor CHECK/S,OFF/S,ON/S                Default: OFF
  Change the drive motor. Normally you won't need to turn it on because as
  soon as a CD needs to be read it's turned on anyway. But it's quite good if
  the CD in the drive has a spinny pattern on it though. Er.

- CDReset CHECK/S,OFF/S,ON/S                Default: OFF
  Change the reset on eject option - that irritating thing where you take out
  a CD and the computer decides that you'd really like it to reset for you.


Audio commands
--------------

- CDAudio CHECK/S,SINGLE/S,DOUBLE/S            Default: SINGLE
  Change speed for playing music. Double speed is completely useless in every
  way (unless you're into Autechre or LFO or something).

- CDPause OFF/S,ON/S,TOGGLE/S                Default: TOGGLE
  Pause or unpause any music playing with CDPlay. If CDPlay isn't running it
  doesn't do much. The TOGGLE option will make it switch to the other pause
  state.

- CDPlay CHECK/S,TRACK/N,OFFSET,LENGTH,PAUSED/S        Default: All CD
  Play all or part of a track or CD.

  If you don't give a track to play, it goes for the start of the CD. If the
  track number you give or the start of the CD happens to be a CD-ROM track
  then it'll stop with an error.

  If you give an offset then it'll start playing from that offset into the
  track (or the start of the CD if you didn't give a track number). It's in
  the form minutes:seconds:frames. A frame is 1/75th of a second, it ranges
  from 0 to 74.

  If you don't give a length, the whole track is played (or the whole CD if
  you didn't give a track number). The length is given in the same way as the
  offset. The length can go over track boundaries with no problems (unless it
  runs into a CD-ROM track).

  CDInfo will probably help a lot when it comes to working out lengths and
  offsets.

  If you give the PAUSED switch, CDPlay will go to the start of the section
  to play but then it'll go straight into pause and wait for the CDPause
  command. This can be useful in presentations where you want any audio to
  immediately happen on some action or in time with a visual effect. You can
  set it up a couple of seconds before then unpause when the action happens,
  so there's no annoying seek times. You could even copy CDPause to RAM: for
  the most speed possible. If the action never gets round to happening, just
  use CDStop. You don't even need to do that if your program doesn't need to
  load files off CD (playing music, even when paused, stops files from being
  read in until the music finishes), look down a couple of paragraphs about
  running CDPlay twice.

  The Archos Overdrive CD with V9 of the software or below can't use this
  option because of buggy CD32 emulation. Versions 10 and up may be able to,
  but I haven't been able to check. If it can't and you need it, please yell
  at Archos.

  CDPlay will only return when the play has finished. If you're calling this
  from another program (eg. Scala), or even a shell, you'll probably want to
  run it in the background. You can do this by sticking a 'Run <>NIL:' before
  'CDPlay <whatever>'.

  If you manage to run CDPlay twice in the background to play two tracks at
  once, the first one will stop and give way to the second.

  A few examples are probably in order...

  - CDPlay
    Play the entire CD.

  - CDPlay 4
    Play track 4.

  - CDPlay 3 2:50:37
    Play track 3, starting from 2 minutes 50 and half a seconds into the
    track.

  - CDPlay 5 LENGTH 1:12:0
    Play the first 1 minute 12 seconds of track 5.

  - CDPlay LENGTH 1:12:0
    Play the first 1 minutes 12 seconds of the CD.

  - CDPlay 8 3:12:0 0:4:0 PAUSED
    Play track 8, starting 3 minutes 12 into the track and lasting for 4
    seconds, but wait for CDPause before starting.

  If you give the CHECK switch, it'll check if another CDPlay is playing a CD
  at the moment. This won't check if any other players, for example DCPlayer
  (plug), is playing a CD.

- CDStop
  Stop any music playing with CDPlay. If CDPlay isn't running it doesn't do
  much.

- CDVolume CHECK/S,OFF/S,ON/S,VOLUME/N,FRAMES/N        Default: ON
  Change the volume level for playing music. The volume ranges from 0 to
  32767. OFF can be used instead of 0, and ON can be used instead of 32767.

  If you give the FRAMES option, the volume will fade up or down gradually to
  the new volume in the time you give. A frame is 1/75th of a second, so 75
  will alter the volume gradually over 1 second.

  Some CD drives don't support volume changing. Others may only have OFF and
  ON (like the CD32). Others may be limited to say 4 volumes. In that case,
  the 4 volumes are stretched out to 32768 volumes, so 0 to 8191 is volume
  level 1, 8192 to 16383 is volume level 2, and so on...


CD-ROM commands
---------------

- CDRead FILE/A,OFFSET/A/N,LENGTH/A/N
  Read sectors off the CD into a file. The offset is in sectors (you can use
  the CDInfo command here) and the length is in bytes (but it will always be
  rounded up to an even number).

  This won't read music tracks because either cd.device doesn't allow music
  to be read or the drive itself won't transfer music across to memory, not
  sure which.

- CDSize CHECK/S,SIZE/N                    Default: 2048
  Change the sector size for reading CD-ROMs. There's 2048 (the default) or
  2328 (which isn't). If you set it to one option, the other size CDs can't
  be read. Probably only useful for reading weird CDs from other computers.

- CDSpeed CHECK/S,SINGLE/S,DOUBLE/S            Default: DOUBLE
  Change the speed mode - with this you can read in data at 300K/s instead of
  the usual 150K/s. It can be a bit unreliable though.


Boring wibble
-------------

All the programs are copyrighted by me, but they're all freely distributible.
They shouldn't be altered in any way and you should only charge for disks,
postage, or packing if you charge anything for copying. Copy the complete
archive if you pass this onto a BBS or PD library or something.

All the programs work fine for me, but if your CD drive blows up or something
then then I can't be held responsible for the mess - use at your own risk and
all that. It's free, after all.

And finally none of the programs or can be used as part of anything that's
sold for profit without my say so, unless it's a presentation, feel free to
use it for them. That includes those nasty capitalistic glossy magazines
with disks and CDs on the front filled full of everyone else's work.

My Email address is [e-mail], if you find a bug or something.

Dan.