Recent Posts

11

PhatBox Hacking / Updated links for the DMS Tools

« Last post by VorTechS on July 25, 2022, 12:08:13 pm »

Hi all,

It seems people have been unable to download the DMS tools of late.  Thanks to those that reported the issue.
It's been a while and since originally creating them, the URL's were out-of-date for the modern browser and so sticking 'https' on the front was all that was needed to fix them up!

I've gone through the latest DMS Tools post and updated the links accordingly.  If you spot any issues then let me know.

If there's still a reliance on external servers for content, and that's a problem I'll spend some time updating the tools to embed the content in the application itself, I should most, if not all of it lying around somewhere!

12

General / Re: Is it worth reviving the PhatHack Forums?

« Last post by VorTechS on July 25, 2022, 12:01:17 pm »

I still have my Phatbox and stereo, and possibly an Audi version too lying around, so I'm happy to put some effort into some new tools (probably geared around Windows).
Perhaps we can GitHub something?

13

General / Re: Is it worth reviving the PhatHack Forums?

« Last post by Terry_Kennedy on July 19, 2022, 04:17:38 am »

Ok. I'm still here occasionally and I assume some of the other old timers are too - somebody is paying the bills to keep the lights on.

An update on my experiments - I'm using a different mSATA SSD and a different mSATA to IDE adapter and it has been running in my car successfully for a few months now. I still don't have the complete FreeBSD side of my music tools running, but there's enough working to build a DMS.

14

General / Re: Is it worth reviving the PhatHack Forums?

« Last post by 4driver4 on July 19, 2022, 12:28:18 am »

I'm just finding this forum now.  I'm a long time user of Phatty and I've dusted off a few old boxes for some of my older cars. 
I don't think this forum needs to push the envelope, but it's hard to find solid support for these things.

15

General / Re: Is it worth reviving the PhatHack Forums?

« Last post by Terry_Kennedy on April 12, 2022, 09:03:39 pm »

In my case (and the reason I came here) is that I have been running a PhatBox in my 2003 BMW since the car was new. The PhatBox has been hacked and I've been using a 320GB WD Blue hard drive in the DMS. For the last few years (8, actually, according to the date of the newest MP3 file in the DMS) the whole thing has been in a state of benign neglect (AKA "it just works").

But I've gone through a number of different Windows versions (I'm now on Windows 10 LTSC 2019) and I was faced with needing to reinstall all of the various bits I use to populate a DMS. I'll spare you the gory details of how I populate the DMS, but I will say that I use:

• PhatHack (to prepare the DMS)
• AT&T Natural Voices (text to speech engines for PhatVoice)
• PhatVoice (to actually generate the album / artist name speech)
• PhatNoise Music Manager 2.35 (to sign the playlists and update the database index)

I decided I was going to experiment with a mSATA SSD in an IDE adapter, because that poor WD Blue has been on some terrible roads, as well as drives across open desert and up mountains where there are no roads.

I first tried a simple copy of my 320GB DMS data to a mSATA SSD, but that has been showing some problems - appearing to work well at the beginning and then just speaking text at random. So I'm going to have to backtrack and see if I can create a traditional IDE DMS. If that works, I'll get back to the SSD experiments. This does involve my whole music chain from CD image bin + cue files to TOC files and MP3 files, and then writing them out to the DMS for PMM to sign and build the database. Part of the problem there is that a lot of my local procedures are written in Perl and don't work under modern FreeBSD + Perl.

16

General / Is it worth reviving the PhatHack Forums?

« Last post by Terry_Kennedy on April 12, 2022, 08:45:55 pm »

It has been a long time since anyone posted on these forums.

I'm trying to see if there are some lurkers still around who have an interest in using these forums to discuss the Phatnoise PhatBox / Kenwood Music Keg and possibly expand into other types of unusual non-factory audio systems.

17

PhatBox Hacking / New Phatbox Owner Help!

« Last post by Eric99 on October 28, 2021, 10:55:55 am »

Hello, I am the new owner of Phatbox. I got the phatbox from a friend and bought a dms drive, but I don't have any software for my Kenwood radio on it. What do I need and where to download them? I've read about Phatbox hacking but don't know how to do it. Please help

18

Phatnoise Media Manager / Re: INFO: Availablity of PMM and the servers that support it

« Last post by nackuk on December 26, 2020, 11:47:37 am »

In case anybody out there is wondering Phatnoise Music Manager and the DMS work really great with windows 10. Just plug in the usb and install the software and the DMS will be recognised without an issue. Its really great once more.

19

PhatBox Hacking / Re: Problem creating new DMS with 240 GB SSD - Windows exception error

« Last post by sticman on May 03, 2020, 05:57:07 am »

A little bit late, from my experience ditch the windows 10. I have not (along with some others here) had any luck with Windows 10. I use VBox VM's of Windows 7 Home for the DMS tools and XP for the PMM 1.87 I have.

https://forum.phathack.com/index.php/topic,5392.0.html
Also talks about similar issue with Windows 10.

20

Buying and Selling / FS: Kenwood Music Key KHD-C710 (Audi A6) 80Gb

« Last post by eddy123 on November 02, 2019, 12:20:36 pm »

Well not sure if this is to any interest for anyone but have one for sale which I should have sell in 2016 when I removed it. I have the long Audi cable, 80Gb disk (DMS) and USB cradle. Further I can add all the related Phathack files if interest and AT&T Natural Voices. Its still cool to use anno 2019! :-) ps I'm in Europe!