DMS cartridge without a cradle

[gbradley]

Has anyone tried working with the DMS cartridge (loading MP3s and playlists) by connecting the hard drive in it directly to a PC without using the cradle?

The reason I'm asking is that I just got a working Phatbox but the cradle is trashed. I went ahead and ordered a replacement from Phatnoise without realizing that it takes 2-3 weeks for them to ship it. I was wondering if there's a way I can at least get some music on it for now just so I have something to listen to until I can get the cradle and do it properly.

I have access to an adapter that will connect a laptop hard drive to a regular IDE interface but I was wondering if a Windows system would even be able to read the file system on a DMS drive or if I should mount it on a Linux system.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[judb]

That works fine.  Its a pain to open the DMS each time you want to connect it but it works.

[S80_UK]

So does PMM automatically recognise the DMS just the same without using the cradle?  Would this then allow Phatnoise Media Manager to support the big 160G drives, or is the limitation not in the cradle driver, but in the disk handling routines?

Thanks,

Les.

[judb]

I haven't tried a 160 gig drive.  PMM won't be able to eject the drive since its not usb hot pluggable when its IDE connected.

[gbradley]

Strange...I have the drive hooked up and both its partitions show up in my list of drives, but the Phatnoise Media Manager says there was an error reading the drive ID. Needless to say, PMM doesn't let me work with the Phatbox drive after that.

I don't see any references to that error either on this forum or on the Phatnoise knowledge base.

[gbradley]

Well, I uninstalled the Media Manager and installed the Music Manager instead. That was able to find the phatbox drive and make use of it. I didn't get the drive ID message immediately like I did with the Media Manager. The only time I saw that error message is when I went into the options for Audible files.

The manager was still able to work with the drive as if it were plugged into the cradle.

This all may seem like old hat to you guys but this is my first experience with the Phatbox. My last in-car MP3 player was a Neo 35, which is quite different.

[sbingner]

Yea, I was about to suggest that.  The new PMM software uses some internal functions that don't work very well... they won't work with any drive >120GB even in the USB cradle.  You have to use the old PMM with anything >120GB

[S80_UK]

I see that Phatnoise have now put an upgraded Media Manager on their website (version 3.92).  Not sure when it appeared - sometime in the past few weeks I think.  Amongst other things it claims to fix some issues related to authorising - deauthorising for Audible format files.

http://www.phatnoise.com/products/software/PMM_3.92_WWW.exe

This build seems to add support for USB drives, presumably for the new Kenwood head units.  I don't yet have a 160GB drive but I was wondering if they might have changed things in this area as well.  Can anyone comment?

[sbingner]

I was out drinking tonight, but I'll try to test it w/ 160GB drive thomorrow evening