Recent Posts

41

PhatBox Hacking / Re: DMS SSD Solution

« Last post by alkmisc on February 02, 2019, 01:58:14 am »

For formatting I just let the Phathack DMS 2.15 tools run and it didn't require any intervention.  I was running it with the administrator account and the elevated permissions option and I think I used the quick format.  It worked on Windows 7.  I could not get the software to run correctly on 10 or XP but that seemed more a software than hardware concern.  I don't know if a virtual machine would cause any issues since that inserts even more intermediate layers in hardware recognition and translation.

42

PhatBox Hacking / Re: DMS SSD Solution

« Last post by Au2ro2 on January 31, 2019, 12:56:08 pm »

OK, so I got an mSATA 240GB drive and 2.5" IDE convertor/caddy and put it into my DMS, but I can't get the drive formatted.
I have tried PhatHack DMS tools in my Win 10 Virtualbox and 'Create New DMS' never seems to complete successfully.
I even left it running overnight and in the morning it stated that it had successfully created a new DMS but there was a windows error onscreen as well and the drive was not recognised by PHMM.
I can't even format successfully it from within Linux when it is in the DMS cradle.
I did suspect a poor power connection in the cradle which I have now sorted but I still can't format it.
The cradle does still recognise my old drive when I put it in the DMS so I know that it is working
I have now ordered a USB to IDE adaptor device to see if that helps.

Is there a trick to formatting an mSATA for use with the Phatbox?

43

PhatBox Hacking / Re: DMS SSD Solution

« Last post by VorTechS on January 28, 2019, 12:35:37 pm »

It sounds like that's pretty much going to be like the GraceNote solution where it scans the first X bytes of the file, converts to a hash and then matches it up against whatever is stored in their DB.

Definitely doable.  I'll bear that in mind, when I get some free time to dive into the code again.

44

PhatBox Hacking / Re: DMS SSD Solution

« Last post by Au2ro2 on January 28, 2019, 12:32:45 pm »

Great Idea, I will have to try this, I was even considering converting my FLAC collection to MP3 to be able to fit some new stuff onto my 80GB drive. Or getting a larger PATA drive.
This solution will save me from having to do that.
BTW I use MusicBrainz Picard https://picard.musicbrainz.org/downloads/ to tag all my files inc. FLAC files and PHMM does recognise the tags OK. (Only a few are problematic and I can change the metadata in PHMM for those.)
I am just going through re-tagging as I was annoyed that some artists/albums/tracks were tagged with slightly different names for different files.

45

PhatBox Hacking / Re: DMS SSD Solution

« Last post by VorTechS on January 28, 2019, 12:29:35 pm »

That's good to know, I haven't ventured into SSD territory, but might do so now!

Only thing left to do is remember how I got PHMM to generate track titles from FLAC files like I did before...

Phathack MM reads tag information embedded in the files itself.  If there's no tag information in the file, there was no way written to try and read them from elsewhere - although it's a possibility.

46

PhatBox Hacking / DMS SSD Solution

« Last post by alkmisc on January 27, 2019, 02:37:56 pm »

The hard drive in my DMS was starting to show signs of failure and due for a replacement so I started looking at options that don't involve a mechanical drive (when it gets really cold in the northeast they don't like to move, plus bouncing on dirt roads probably is not good for durability).  That pretty much leaves SSD drives which traditionally have not played well with the Phatbox plus IDE SSDs seem scarce nowadays.  My last drive was 320 GB and getting full so capacity was a consideration.

I ended up trying a Samsung 860 EVO mSATA 500GB drive in an "AbleConn IIDE-MSAT mSATA SSD to 2.5-Inch IDE Adapter Converter" which adapts the mSATA drive to IDE.  Guess what?  It works!  Phatbox can make use of the whole capacity of the drive.  I'm guessing this may also work with other mSATA drives but don't have the need to try right now.  It'll be good the hear if anyone else does try with other drives.  The only visible weak point in the system is that the drive is secured by a wire latch so we'll see how the holds up over time.

Only thing left to do is remember how I got PHMM to generate track titles from FLAC files like I did before...

47

PhatBox Hacking / Re: PhatHack DMS Tools v2.15 - January 2012

« Last post by VorTechS on January 18, 2019, 09:24:51 am »

So I installed on a different machine with a different version of Windows and that seems to work now.  Funny since it worked previously on my other machine a couple of years ago.

Interesting, perhaps something on the old machine hijacking URLs but not getting a good response ...?  Who knows!  At least it is working now!

48

PhatBox Hacking / Re: PhatHack DMS Tools v2.15 - January 2012

« Last post by alkmisc on January 18, 2019, 01:01:17 am »

So I installed on a different machine with a different version of Windows and that seems to work now.  Funny since it worked previously on my other machine a couple of years ago.

49

PhatBox Hacking / Re: PhatHack DMS Tools v2.15 - January 2012

« Last post by VorTechS on January 16, 2019, 11:28:40 am »

I just checked, and it seems to be populating for me.

The tools actually attempts to load using 2 URLs:

http://www.dailyphat.com/firmware/am.xml
http://downloads.phathack.com/firmware/am.xml

50

PhatBox Hacking / Re: PhatHack DMS Tools v2.15 - January 2012

« Last post by alkmisc on January 16, 2019, 01:24:24 am »

I've tried it a few times including reinstalling the hack tools but still run into the same issue with no firmware in the dropdown.  Is there a way to check if there's communication with the server on this end?