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Can anyone suggest a small/cheap robot that you can but your own drive (Plextor) in? Note: comments below are completely ignorant about what robots and itnerfaces Spoon plans to implement. The standard answer to this would be: 1. An MF-Digital Baxter (or the same unit by different vendors: Acronova Dupliq, Discmakers Pico, etc.). Holds 25 discs.

Kenwood's CDDB-enabled NetNamer software will be available for download on the kenwoodusa.com web site once the consumer registers the product with. TuneBase(r) family of audio CD management solutions, PowerPlay(tm) home theater video server, Escient Digital Storage Group's PowerFile(tm) C200 media. Moondog Digital provides hands-free cd ripping and automated DVD ripping software. FREE RipStation Replacement Software. PowerFile R200, PowerFile R200DL (dual-layer), PowerFile C200, PowerFile C200S (solo), and Starmatrix models; Intelligent queuing allows for dual drive ripping to process discs.

Available retail for ~$600-$800 depending. Controlled using SDK which communicates with robot via USB (not serial).

Drive is accessed via USB bridge, which can be unreliable (Prolific PL-2506?) 2. Primera Bravo SE DiscPublisher. Holds 20 discs, has built in disc printer. Available online for ~$1500. Do not confuse with the AutoPrinter, ~$1000, which does not come with a drive (and may be blocked from a custom installation work with one). Unsure of interface.

If you hadn't required the ability to swap drives, the answer to this would be: 1. A Sony VAIO XL1B1/XL1B2/XL1B3 200-disc changer. Granted, not really a robot, but they're priced better.

The firewire control connection requires use of Windows Media Center, mtx command line client (a windows port is available), or custom 'scsi' level calls. $150-$350, depending on where you find it. These are, essentially, re-badged Powerfile units with only a single non-swappable drive. My approach is to scour ebay. Target your prices atapi bridges. I verified (today) that the robot control board is the same, they just hooked up an unused serial port and disconnected the scsi port.

Unfortunately, more investigation is needed with an older unit to know if there is a significant firmware change that allows for the serial control or if it the serial control always works and a 'user-initiated' extension of the serial port would work for the scsi units. Three cautions: 1. The Cambridge Introduction To Narrative Second Edition Pdf. Warranty - some new unit warranties don't allow drive swaps without violating them.

Tray extension - make sure that any drive you plan to use inside a robot has a tray that pushes the 'disc circle' out significantly clear of the drive faceplate. With the move to smaller form factor 5.25' optical drive housings, the trays often have a circle that doesn't clear the faceplate. Some drives will work with the faceplate removed, but some disc circles hardly even clear the casing, let alone the faceplate these days. Retention clips - some tray circles have little nibs or clips meant to keep the disc from relocating off center and these would have to be removed (shaved or cut) for robot use. How about COMPOSER Optical Autoloaders?

Eli - one thing to remember: if the Primera autoloader doesn't have a drive installed and instead has a blank faceplate, it's a Primera Conductor, not a Composer. The Conductor is a printer autoloader and will not drop discs into a drive even if you install one.* The firmware chip is the same as the composer firmware, but primera programed the unit to one of several profiles at the factory, and I still haven't worked out how to change that.

It might involve one or more of the following: 1. Using the front panel keys in an unpublished pattern. Invocations via the standard serial port. Invocations via the secondary serial port (you may need to add a 4-pin header on some boards). Using an in-circuit programmer on the 4-pin chip near the left side of the board to modify parameters. Or, just stick to buying a Composer/Composer Pro unit.

-brendan * A similar issue arises if you wish to install a second drive into a Composer - unless it is a Composer Pro, the robot arm won't go to the second drive, even if the firmware is the same. Are parts available to consider building a ripper yourself? The cost of these 'robots' seems outrageous. It doesnt have to look pretty, but I would imagine that it can be done.

Short answer: no, not unless you are a masochist.:) IMHO, the best do-it-yourself approach would be to get the Sony XL1B (aka XL1B2 aka XL1B3) changer, which can be had for ~$200 from time to time. It's big, but you can pre-load 200 CDs. Then: a) Lobby Spoon to support it the changer. B) Use the MediumChanger GUI software, links can be found in the AVS Forum website.

And/or c) Write your own batch files using the windows version of MTX (which now supports the XL1B series) and a command line ripper (perhaps db power amp, if all the features you need are supported at the command line). Eli - At the current ebay prices, I haven't been able to justify adding one to my collection, so I don't have a Max unit here (just the Composer XL/Pro units). I did, however, download the RoboPrint v1.3 utility (1.3 is for Composer-Max, 2.0 is for ADL-Max) and used Portmon to find that it seeks the robot by sending '_SV' and '_MOVE:S' on the serial port (not sure of the speed yet). This indicates to me that the command set for the Max is probably different from the Composer XL/Pro units (though it seems to share a common heritage, as 'SV' is shared). I suspect you're the only present (or technically.future) owner of one on the forum (so far), so you might be the one experimenting with the RoboPrint/Filemon combination (and later, hyperterminal) to document the command set.

Spoon listed experimental support for the Rimage DTP. I think those came in two different models. One model had a SCSI interface and the other model was Firewire (with a serial port maybe?). Is the experimental support for both models or just one? Also curious about multiple robots connected to one system. I have seen bhoar's youtube video and it is amazing.

Kudos brendan. Are there any limitations on multiple robots connected to one computer?

Can I connect two USB robots, and one SCSI robot, and two Firewire robots to the same computer? Thanks in advance for any help/guidance, CBQ. Spoon listed experimental support for the Rimage DTP. I think those came in two different models.

One model had a SCSI interface and the other model was Firewire (with a serial port maybe?). Is the experimental support for both models or just one? Also curious about multiple robots connected to one system. I have seen bhoar's youtube video and it is amazing. Kudos brendan. Are there any limitations on multiple robots connected to one computer? Can I connect two USB robots, and one SCSI robot, and two Firewire robots to the same computer?

Re: DTP serial units - I support only the serial-connected (w/ firewire) ones for now. And even then, prepare to be disappointed. From my testing, the pickers on DTP units cannot handle much variance in hub-type and thickness. After five or so audio CDs, the two DTP units I tested almost invariably got stuck trying to pick because by that point the top two CDs in the input stack had somewhat 'complementary' hub styles that the picker fingers can't grab between. I think the DTP units were engineered for the hub-type of blank CD-Rs in the late 90s.and are just not a great tool for random audio CD picking. It's possible the units I tested were defective or badly adjusted?

Re: DTP SCSI units. I might end up try to support for them via the debug connector on the robot controller board. Not sure how well that will work out, though. But really, as above, I currently doubt they're useful for CD ripping. Re: multiple robots There's no multiple device limitation in spoon's batch ripper.

You associate each drive with the right device and provide the correct command line options in the batch config (if necessary - e.g. For serial-based ones you'd need to provide the com port(s)).

There are some limitations related to the devices, however, and those relate to the manufacturer's drivers, firmware, etc. Sony Changers (firewire using a somewhat broken scsi changer interface) - I seem to recall hearing about issues with addressing multiple units in windows, so you might be limited to one of those at a time (due to a bug in the changer device firmware - I suspect that under some circumstances, it thinks it should talk to the drive inside the next changer device instead of the one inside it's own). This might be remedied by not chaining them and, instead, putting them on separate firewire buses.

Minicubis/Baxter/DupliQ/Pico units (proprietary USB driver) - last I heard, they too were limited to one unit per system, due to driver issues. A future device driver revision from datatronics might remedy this. Note that the datatronics driver documentation seems to show support for multiple units, I suspect they just haven't properly implemented it. Serial-connected changers (mf-digital, discmakers, mediatechnics, amtren, etc.) - at least two devices, probably more. The serial library I use only allows two open devices at a time.

However, each serial port is in use for only a short while. I'd need to experiment more to see if there's going to be a problem with more than 2 units. On the plus side, I doubt there'd be a problem using several manual load drives, a baxter, a sony changer and two serial robots all at once. Caveat: It's all experimental, no guarantees. My drivers still don't do the right thing at the end of a batch at the moment.

I think the DTP units were engineered for the hub-type of blank CD-Rs in the late 90s.and are just not a great tool for random audio CD picking. It's possible the units I tested were defective or badly adjusted? Re: DTP SCSI units. I might end up try to support for them via the debug connector on the robot controller board.

Not sure how well that will work out, though. But really, as above, I currently doubt they're useful for CD ripping.

Re: multiple robots There's no multiple device limitation in spoon's batch ripper. You associate each drive with the right device and provide the correct command line options in the batch config (if necessary - e.g. For serial-based ones you'd need to provide the com port(s)). There are some limitations related to the devices, however, and those relate to the manufacturer's drivers, firmware, etc. Sony Changers (firewire using a somewhat broken scsi changer interface) - I seem to recall hearing about issues with addressing multiple units in windows, so you might be limited to one of those at a time (due to a bug in the changer device firmware - I suspect that under some circumstances, it thinks it should talk to the drive inside the next changer device instead of the one inside it's own). This might be remedied by not chaining them and, instead, putting them on separate firewire buses. Minicubis/Baxter/DupliQ/Pico units (proprietary USB driver) - last I heard, they too were limited to one unit per system, due to driver issues.

A future device driver revision from datatronics might remedy this. Note that the datatronics driver documentation seems to show support for multiple units, I suspect they just haven't properly implemented it. Serial-connected changers (mf-digital, discmakers, mediatechnics, amtren, etc.) - at least two devices, probably more. The serial library I use only allows two open devices at a time. However, each serial port is in use for only a short while.

I'd need to experiment more to see if there's going to be a problem with more than 2 units. On the plus side, I doubt there'd be a problem using several manual load drives, a baxter, a sony changer and two serial robots all at once. Caveat: It's all experimental, no guarantees. My drivers still don't do the right thing at the end of a batch at the moment. -brendan Well this stinks. I just purchased a used Rimage DTP 4000. And it is the SCSI model.

I guess I am doubly screwed. It has a worthless/fickle picker and the SCSI interface is unsupported.:( Do either you or Spoon need a SCSI Rimage DTP 4000 to experiment with? Brendan, I have read your wiki and the majority of the threads here, but I am new to cd ripping so please bear with me. Please tell me if my understanding is correct.

There are two primary interfaces when ripping with robotics. The data interface for the music/rip 2.

The control interface for the robotics and drive Currently, if I understand you correctly, only firewire and serial are supported for the robotics control interface? No USB or SCSI support for the robotics? As for the data interface, on your wiki your write - 'USB limitations on ATA/ATAPI command support, including examples where you would likely run into problems. USB (mis)handling of unusual calls (e.g. For secure ripping) USB (and firewire) problems with secure CD ripping/damaged discs.' I am assuming you are referring to the data interface.

But now that I read it again, perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps you are referring to the control interface via USB??? I had really hoped to do secure ripping with a robotic setup. Is this not possible? Well this stinks. I just purchased a used Rimage DTP 4000.

And it is the SCSI model. I guess I am doubly screwed. It has a worthless/fickle picker and the SCSI interface is unsupported.:( Don't feel too bad. Spoon, Eli has been interested in having the batch ripper support more than just a binary (accepted/rejected) output decision via unload/reject. I can foresee ways that I could handle that directly in the ULCLI for certain loaders. E.g., if the disc's metadata, accuraterip and secure 'status' information is passed via flags, I've got some ideas on how to use that information for rip result specific filing of discs in some of the robotic loaders that allow for explicit stack addressing. E.g., I'd like to see something like one of the following three approaches implemented: Idea *1: --metadatafound=true/falsetrue if match was found and used --accurateripfound=true/falsetrue if disc was found in accuraterip --accuratelyripped=true/falsetrue if all tracks were AR verified --securelyripped=true/falsetrue if all tracks were AR verified *or* if none were, all were securely ripped.

Alternately to deal with a result where it's Ok if 8 of 10 were AR and 2 were secure. True if all tracks were either AR verified *or* were securely ripped. Idea *2: --metadatafound=true/false --accurateripfound=true/false --accurateripstatus=all/some/none --secureripstatus=all/some/none Idea *3: --metadatafound=true/false --accurateripfound=true/false --totaltracks=* --accuratetracks=* --securetracks=* -brendan. Brendan, Just wondering if you have any status updates on ulcli 1.0? Getting there, up to internal release v0.92. In general work has been progressing, but I've done no coding work in the last eight or nine days for several reasons. Some of them are general day to day stuff (work and family obligations), but others are related to prepping my home office for heavy duty testing of the ULCLI with large capacity robots.

In other words, things that need to be done in order for code testing before release. An update on robotics. At the moment I have three cd/dvd robots sitting on my desk right now, performing exercises of the the ULCLI scripts all called by one instance of the batch ripper, testing the new ULCLI features and the scripts that implement them. All three robots (A discmakers micro ultra, a kodak kiosk unit and a Primera Composer Pro) use different command sets, yet are working under one instance of the batch ripper. I feel a bit like Zorg, heh: '.look at all these little things, so busy now.'

(referring to this scene: ) I should probably watch what I eat tonight. Off to the treadmill and, later, BSG!

I am looking to do large scale ripping with some software just like this, in terms of change/auto loader support which hardware device would be best for use here? Assuming I use the batch ripper software kris, Sorry, I missed your post last month.

I think for large scale ripping, the contemporary MF-Digital and Mediatechnics 250 to 900 disc robots (see their sites) work very well. For reliable secure ripping, it may be necessary to change the connectivity arrangements from their typical method of firewire to SATA or IDE (which may interfere with the primary purpose of the robot). Note that they both do sell their robots not just as duplicators but also with third party software (from ripfactory, GD3 and one other source) that can also be used for ripping. I'd call them up and find out their current hardware specs and package prices. All, I've been testing the dbpa batch ripper with several of the Mediatechnics multi-drive robots and the driver I worked on is now rock solid. If anyone out there would like to test a pre-release of the second revision of the mf-digital or mediatechnics drivers, please drop me a PM (or email me brendandothoar@gmailDOTcom replacing 'dot' with a period symbol) and let me know which hardware you have of the three listed on this page: If your hardware is under another brand name, but looks like one of those, please feel free to contact me about that as well.

Have they provided an SDK or any additional info for the composer max? After getting a new PC I need to see about getting a new motherboard for mine - I think the serial chip? I've been using the reference release for a few weeks now and am quite impressed. I've ripped a hundred or so CD's and am about to embark on the rest of my collection of 800.

I'm thinking that it's probably not worth buying an auto-loader, but it'd be great to have a collection of drives such as a CD server tower. Does anyone have any experience with these towers or recommendations for models? I was considering an HP Surestore Tower such as: Also, in regard to towers and the batch ripper, I'm hoping that I can use this workflow: 1) load a group of disks 2) confirm the meta information for each one with perfectmeta 3) rip the disks while i do something else 4) come back and confirm accuraterip and secure rip results 5) rinse & repeat Does anyone know if that's possible and, if not, is there a way to use perfectmeta after the fact to correct bad tags?

Thanks in advance. Malcolm, [I'll skip commenting on the process (steps 1 - 5) and comment only on hardware.] I'd avoid buying a pre-made tower, as almost all of those are set up for either automated duplication or for CD/DVD sharing over a network (such as the unit you pointed to) in which case the drives only talk directly to an on-board purpose-built controller board. Neither genre of optical tower are set up to connect multiple drives directly to a host computer, which is what the batch ripper, like most rippers, expects to see. If you still want to use multiple manually loaded drives, my recommendation would be one of three scenarios: 1.

Assemble a purpose built computer with six or more externally-facing half-heigh 5.25' drive bays filled with optical drives, which you could then connect directly to the motherboard (ATA or SATA) or additional PCI cards (ATA or SATA). Finding the right case, in the right price range, can be troublesome.

Obtain a relatively cheap four to eight-bay external drive enclosure, fill it with optical drives and add the appropriate number of USB or firewire bridge boards, then connect that to your existing computer. Again, finding the right enclosure, in the right price range, can be troublesome. Attach several external optical drives (via firewire or USB) in single drive enclosures to your current computer. [And finally: both firewire and USB generally work. To take advantage of some of the rip-quality enhancing features of dbpoweramp, you'd want to enable C2 if your drive supports it. At the moment, that only works via ATA/SATA and some USB bridge chipsets.

I suspect within a couple of months it will work with firewire as well, but there's no official timeline for that.] -brendan. Brendan- Thanks for the advice. I had mistakenly assumed those servers would reveal the drives to the host OS. So I'll put a collection of drives together along the lines of one of your suggestions and if that proves to be more work than its worth, I'll invest in an autoloader and go from there. Spoon- Thanks for the clarification. Could you further clarify whether it's possible to use perfectmeta after the fact?

It's the best tool I've seen (by far) for tagging, but I still tend to fix a tag or two on about 6 out of 10 disks. For me, accuraterip/secure rip results are the most important, but good tags are a close second. I'm ripping to FLAC and will batch convert later for my portables, so I'd like to have the ripping/tagging part done so I don't have to think about it ever again. (I spent about 6 weeks googling, lurking here and at HA, and experimenting with EAC, CDparanoia, iTunes, etc, before settling on dbpa.

I feel like I'm on the cusp of being ready to rip nearly a thousand disks before I pile them into boxes and throw them in the attic). In a perfect world, I'd use an autoloader to batch rip my whole collection and have it only notify me of accuraterip and/or secure errors, then I'd leisurely make my way through the metatag quagmire. In terms of workflow separating an insecure rip into a reject pile to deal with later is easy, but incorrect metatags generally take a little bit of brain time so I've found it's difficult to do something else productively while ripping. Thanks again for taking the time to get back to me. The vitality of this forum was a part of my decision to use dbpa (though now that I've ripped 100 or so disks, I have to admit I'd be using it even if this forum didn't exist). I am considering purchasing dbpoweramp. I have been researching this for over a year.

I am planning on ripping my entire CD collection of 3500 discs to FLAC format. I got a PowerFile last year an came across this program last fall. I have been waiting to see if the batch ripper will work. I have read most of the forum postings. I know some have had issues with PowerFiles. I have a PowerFile C200-RAM unit (black with aluminum face). When I turn the unit on it displays version 4.0.2 (I assume the firmware version).

Do you think this unit will work. I want to rip my discs to individual FLAC files. Thanks for your help.

Just a check-in. Any plans for Plasmon D120 support?:) I'd love to get rid of this PointSoft stuff and go with a 'one software' package rip->encode setup.:D I doubt spoon has plans to write device-specific drivers for industrial medium changers. On the off-chance, it might be worth trying to see if the Sony XL1B driver works? The sony and the plasmon are both medium changer devices and the whole idea of this device class was to abstract all the IO calls to make them all work almost the same.

Of course, Powerfile and Sony deviated a bit from the standard (as do most medium changer manufacturers) so sometimes one set of code works for your equipment, sometimes some tweaks are required. Brendan, did you ever get your composermax? I am waiting for a new serial cable.

Primera talked me into trying a new cable before buying a new board, though I will be shocked if the cable is actually the problem. I figure since the robotics all seem to work fine and respond correctly the the front panel buttons, and the disc drives all work the only thing left is the main board. No, still waiting for mine to arrive. I ended up having to pay $200 shipping, instead of the $50 on the original invoice (annoying because it only put me over my 'limit' after I'd paid the initial auction payment). So, I guess they're still working out the freight details? It's been over a week since we worked it all out, I should give them a call. So now that batch has gone final I am seriously considering buying a small auto loader to re-rip ~4000 cds to FLAC.

Does anyone have any recommendations or thoughts. I am currently thinking about either the Baxter or the MicroOrbit. The MicroOrbit looks nice because of the fewer moving parts and and the higher capacity (50 vs 25). I am fairly ignorant about auto loaders, am certainly open to any other suggestions. Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

For batch ripper used, I'd recommend unit in the following order if used in good working condition or new (recommendation weighs disc capacity and multiple drives heavily, otherwise I'd push the 100-disc composer units down a bit in the list): 1. Newblue Fx Activation Code Serial Gta. Primera Composer Pro: 100 discs, two drives. Mechanism isn't fast as others (and can be a bit finicky), but having two drives is a definite bonus.

Preferably a firewire, not SCSI model, as the latter requires you building in firewire/USB interfaces yourself and is also likely to be pretty ancient (older = more chance the unit has had a long hard life). Includes input, output and reject locations.

Primera Composer family units (applies to similar units below) often show up in untrustworthy condition on ebay so only spring for it if it is guaranteed in good working order. Primera Composer XL.

100 discs, but only one drive. Otherwise just like Composer Pro.

Discmakers Elite Micro, Discmakers Micro Ultra, Amtren Flexwriter 1 (I?), Ripstation 7601X. All the same unit hardware-wise. Depending on generation, this may be a 60-disc or more rarely a 75-disc unit, with one drive. Includes input, output and reject locations. Some used units may need the controller-to-arm cable replaced if there are transient open connections causing disc drops (relatively easy to do, it's heavy duty telephone cable).

With that said, mechanism is less finicky than Composer family units. Input bin spikes can be moved on some units to accommodate a stack of mini-cds. A true classic. Kodak Kiosk or Microboards MicroOrbit. These are also built like a tank (e.g. The Kodak Kiosk unit is perfect for retail use, unlike any other robots mentioned).

Some reports of extra-thick discs (e.g. Non-standard dual sided disc with DVD on one side and CD on the other) causing the units to get stuck. Kodak Kiosk unit based on Microboards MicroOrbit design.

A 50-disc unit. Only one output pile option, so Rejects and Unloads both go into the same pile.

Comes wired with a USB to serial and USB to IDE bridge so no hardware tweaking necessary. Hard to come by (these are always retail operation surplus units), I can ask around to my sources if you are interested. Microboards MicroOrbit. As above, but instead of being wired for use as a computer peripheral it comes as an integrated duplicator without any IO intefaces, you would need to open it up, gut it a bit and/or bypass the duplication controller and install your own USB to IDE bridge (and potentially a USB to serial converter).

If you're not interested in wiring your own serial cable and breaking the duplicator functionality, then look for the Kodak unit above instead. Primera Composer.

50 discs, one drive. Otherwise just like Composer Pro.

MF-Digital Baxter aka Datatronics Minicubis (the OEM for all of them) aka Mediatechnics Fusion X aka Acronova DupliQ aka Discmakers Pico aka Ripstation 7601, etc. A bit limited: only 25 discs per load, unit is a bit fragile and due to driver limitations, only one connected to a computer at a time. On the plus side, it does have a separate output space for Rejects, but unfortunately it drops them 'over the back shoulder' which isn't nice for precious CDs. Only unit that can handle both mini-cds and business-card cds out of the box. --- There are some newer units out there that I might investigate if they start appearing at drastically cut prices on ebay (discmakers forte or aleratec roboracer), but I cannot recommend them now because a) I don't know if they are 'serial controlled' which my driver set requires and b) if they are, a driver script would need to be written. -brendan PS - keep in mind that as it stands right now, R13 does not support C2 over firewire and many of the above come configured for firewire. Hopefully R13.1 may resolve this, spoon says he's working on the issue.

No, still waiting for mine to arrive. I ended up having to pay $200 shipping, instead of the $50 on the original invoice (annoying because it only put me over my 'limit' after I'd paid the initial auction payment). So, I guess they're still working out the freight details? It's been over a week since we worked it all out, I should give them a call. As per the other thread, the composer max arrived and the driver is now in a working state.

Please see the Batch Ripper initial post if you wish to acquire the driver for the composer max. >does have a separate output space for Rejects, but unfortunately it drops them 'over the back shoulder' which isn't nice for precious CDs You could put a bin next to the table so they go straight into the trash;) Heh. That is probably what the original designers thought as well, since it was engineered as a duplicator - rejects *are* trash.:) Of course, you could coat the area behind the arm with felt to lessen the potential scratchiness of the over-the-shoulder reject style. I never did, since my first run through my own (small) collection was with a dupliq a couple years back (with riptastic and a custom loader batch file) and I hadn't thought about the handling issue.

One of the nice things about the Batch Ripper is that it 'farms out' all automation duties to plug-in drivers on a drive-by-drive basis. This allows you to mix and match automation devices. I've already shown my drivers (ULCLI based) operating two robots from two different manufacturers in parallel. But even if you only have one robot, you can benefit from this. For example, spoon has elsewhere posted the PX-230a drives are good for trying to recover data from difficult discs, while PX-708 drives may be a better all-purpose drive. So, fill a 4-drive robot with PX-708 drives, configure them with the robot, and then attach one or two PX-230a drives as manually loaded drives.

Configure them accordingly. When you launch the batch ripper, enable all five or six drives.

During the batch, you can check every hour or so and extract rejected discs (clean them if necessary) and load them into the manual-load PX-230a drives *while the batch is running*. Another benefit of the batch ripper approach is that it doesn't care how many drives you assign to a particular robot, even if the robot is not expandable.

This gave me an idea of something to try. For example, say you have a one-drive robot* like the Amtren Flexwriter I (aka Discmakers Elite Micro/Micro Ultra aka Ripstation 7601X) and you also have a two or four drive manual load external 'tower'. Assuming you could position the two units just right, the drives present opened trays with proper load/unload clearance, and you removed the tray-end if necessary, you might be able to get the one-drive robot to reliably also work the tower drives, not just the built in drive! That one drive robot becomes a three or five drive robot.

Note that I have not tried this yet. Some device firmware 'cares' about what tray height it encounters the drive tray at, but based on some experiments earlier this year I think this particular one-drive robot (amtren/discmakers/7601x) would work. Similar to *2 above, but dealing with robots that care about tray height (Primera Composer, Composer XL, Composer Pro), you'd have to limit yourself to placing a drive/drives right at the same pick location as the drive(s) in the unit, but facing opposite the unit's drive(s).

An additional concern would be that you'd also need to immobilize the external drive, since it wouldn't be in a massive tower and would be easy to jostle out of alignment. Still you could double the drive number (two for Composer/Composer XL, four for Composer Pro). -brendan * the baxter/minicubis/pico/dupliq/7601(no x) units not included due to the different API (not ulcli). You could always add a 5th drive to the composermax at the cd printer position.

The robot does not know or care if its a printer or a cd drive. Yes, if you place the drive at the right height properly.but in this case you might also need to adjust the command line scripting to support it, since it isn't in a normal drive position. I don't think it would require any code changes to the ULCLI, as long as you weren't planning to use multiple drivebank= values (code is currently limited to 1 and 2) and set drivebank=1 for all drives (since the printer position interferes with both banks).

Brendan: Thanks for the information, it is extremely helpful. A couple of quick questions. For those devices that do not have a reject pile, I assume the batch ripper will produce a report so that I can easily determine which discs were rejected. Second, concerning the Baxter, I assume it would be relatively easy to build something to safely catch the rejects if I ended up going the route. I'd probably just cut up an old t-shirt to fit the reject drop area on the baxter-type unit as well as the table area next to it and affix it to the unit.

I'd probably just cut up an old t-shirt to fit the reject drop area on the baxter-type unit as well as the table area next to it and affix it to the unit. I got my hands on an Acronova DupliQ.

It works pretty well. I attached a thin piece of foam just above the output tray edge and used your t-shirt idea to make a little slide where they land on another piece of foam. So far, so good. My only complaint is that the Pioneer drive seems to have difficulty reading discs. I get a lot of 'Secure (warning)' messages on discs that have no problems with my desktop setup. I may try to swap the drive later today and see if that helps.

Otherwise, the batch ripper is the greatest thing since sliced bread!!! Thanks again, Brendan & Spoon! I got my hands on an Acronova DupliQ. It works pretty well. I attached a thin piece of foam just above the output tray edge and used your t-shirt idea to make a little slide where they land on another piece of foam. So far, so good. My only complaint is that the Pioneer drive seems to have difficulty reading discs.

I get a lot of 'Secure (warning)' messages on discs that have no problems with my desktop setup. I may try to swap the drive later today and see if that helps.

Otherwise, the batch ripper is the greatest thing since sliced bread!!! Thanks again, Brendan & Spoon! You're quite welcome (well for the advice part which was my contribution:) ). I seem to recall that spoon said pioneer drives don't have very good C2 support, perhaps that's what you're seeing?

As usual with drive replacements, make sure you're going to be able to put the original drive back in correctly positioned, just in case. And also make sure to dremel or cut down any of the little disc-holding-clips in the tray, they can interfer with picks and places.

If you plan to use the duplicator for the original purposes, some duplication software (if you use it) will ignore drives not on a whitelist, though this probably isn't an issue for the dupliq as it uses Nero IIRC. I replaced a dead Pioneer with a Hitachi drive in a six-drive mediatechnics duplicator robot, which works fine for testing, but the mf-digital scribe software ignores that replacement drive. Hello there all please excuse my ignorance, could someone explain how i go about my first batchrip. I own the following MFDigital robot (i want to rip my entire CD collection to FLAC.i have downloaded the batch ripper & converter software, dbpoweramp and appropriate codecs.) do i setup a network cable between the scribeEC and my pc or does the music get ripped to the internal HD of the scribeEC? Presumably i need to get the drives of the scribeEC to appear as (for example) E:/ or F:/ drives and then configure them in the batch ripper configuration option many thanks for advice in advance! Please excuse my ignorance, could someone explain how i go about my first batchrip.

I own the following MFDigital robot (i want to rip my entire CD collection to FLAC.i have downloaded the batch ripper & converter software, dbpoweramp and appropriate codecs.) do i setup a network cable between the scribeEC and my pc or does the music get ripped to the internal HD of the scribeEC? Presumably i need to get the drives of the scribeEC to appear as (for example) E:/ or F:/ drives and then configure them in the batch ripper configuration option Hey bren, glad to see you finally got the equipment. This is one of the MF-Digital models that is standalone, has a keypad, but does not run windows, right?

If you look on the back, verify there is no a place for keyboard, video and mouse to connect. If so, it is truly standalone. And if this is a truly standalone system running an embedded OS (linux or a DOS variant), then you'll need to externalize both the drive connections (simple) and the robot connection and make it a peripheral to a windows computer. Don't worry, the control for the robot is just two wires (RxD and TxD) for the serial port. The other question is, are the drives in the unit currently SCSI drives, IDE drives or firewire drives? It's probably best to send me links to or emails containing a few photographs of the unit, including the back paneling.

Once I verify it is what I think it is, I can send you a driver that should work. You can post links here and I've just PM'd you my email address if you need to send me the pictures. I'll need your email address to send the drivers. FYI, there are a several of the MicroOrbit-based Kodak units on ebay, originally made for the Kodak Photo Kiosks (I've seen the robots at Target, for example). Search ebay for: Kodak duplicator.

Yes, they're only 50-disc. And they don't have separate accept vs. Reject - just one input and one output. And.replacing the drive, if you wanted to, would be a custom job (you need to cut notches in the tray for the lift levers to move through.and only some drives have the gear track in the right place for that to work).

You can probably get one for approximately $100 including shipping (to the US, higher elsewhere), as long as you all don't compete against one another: And even less per unit you buy a lot of 10 of them.:) I just did. -brendan PS - spoon - should this thread be moved to the batch ripper subforum? They are actually kind of nice little units. Mine was shipped a few days ago and it seems to be brand new and it was packed well -- almost too well, the box was gigantic for all that was in it. The drivers for the USB-to-IDE and the USB-to-serial converter were auto-installed by Vista and I played around with it a bit with PuTTY pointed at the virtual COM port and the commands on your wiki.

It seems like the relevant ones are just 'I' for inserting a disc into the tray, 'G' for getting a disc from the tray and 'A' to drop this disc (on the floor since it doesn't come with a bin). Besides batch ripper, do you know of any software that works with these? I'm more interested in general recording/burning software. If I could get the thing working with something like Nero or ImgBurn that would be perfect. I think I probably will try to swap in a DVD drive since it seems like the small physical changes to the tray that you mentioned would be all that's needed. Yup, they were made for retail use, so they have to be tough.

As far as I am aware, other than my drivers for the batch ripper (and the kiosk software for kodak which I've never seen), there's no software written for these. The command set is extremely close to the amtren/discmakers units, but the requirement for a 'G'rab and Close-tray before an 'A'ccept means you're unlikely to coerce software to work with these. Most robots only need those two before a 'R'eject. Before swapping drives, get familiar with the placement of the toothed rail on the bottom side of the drive tray and the cutout locations. Any replacement drive will need to have the toothed rail located far enough away from the left and right sides of the tray that cutting out notches won't break the the teeth. It seems to work okay just using a batch file.

Just need to use 'mode' to open the com port and 'copy' to send the serial commands, along with some way of opening/closing the tray and sleep to give the robot time to execute a command. And of course some program that accepts commandline input to rip/burn/whatever. It's not pretty, but it's good enough to do some useful work. You could also use the ULCLI in a batch file as well (the ULCLI is included in the kodak driver file for the batch ripper). That way you could detect 'end of input' situations. FYI, there are a several of the MicroOrbit-based Kodak units on ebay, originally made for the Kodak Photo Kiosks (I've seen the robots at Target, for example).

Looks like the bidding wars have started and they're topping $100 (delivered). Wonder if that's due to my post or a sudden market interest? Out of curiosity, who here has purchased or bid on one of these? If you want to wait until the auction is over to talk about it, that's fine, of course. But I'd like to get a feel for how many of the purchases are coming from batch ripper/ULCLI users. Edit: oh lookee! Someone else bought a lot of 10, and another person bought a lot of 5.

Has anyone used one of the Aleratec CD towers that has a direct USB connection to a PC (non-standalone duplicator)? I'm wondering if one of these towers will show up as 3,4, or 8 drives under windows when you plug in the USB, and thus can be used w/ BatchRipper for some parallel ripping. Typically, those towers only put either a single optical (CD or DVD) drive on the USB connection (for burning the master), or, alternately, only put the internal hard drive on the USB (if it has one, for storing multiple masters).

If you want a multi-drive parallel tower, you'll need to build one yourself. Could dBPowerAmp be used to batch rip non-music CDs? I am a hospital doctor and we have a large number of magnetic resonance scans stored on CD that we want to batch copy to disk. We have a Datatronics MiniCubis and I've been trying to figure out the bulk USB commands to control the robot with limited success - although I can program, I knew very little about USB until now. What I really need is a dos executable that allows me to give each separate robot command so that I can write a batch script to do all the copying of the CDs to hard disk - otherwise the relevant.c and headers would be a great alternative, and I'll do it in C. Any help with finding this code or if it doesn't exist, with guidance on how we could write it would be very helpful.

I get the impression that an SDK exists for controlling this robot - is that right? Thanks in advance. Could dBPowerAmp be used to batch rip non-music CDs? I am a hospital doctor and we have a large number of magnetic resonance scans stored on CD that we want to batch copy to disk. We have a Datatronics MiniCubis and I've been trying to figure out the bulk USB commands to control the robot with limited success - although I can program, I knew very little about USB until now.

What I really need is a dos executable that allows me to give each separate robot command so that I can write a batch script to do all the copying of the CDs to hard disk - otherwise the relevant.c and headers would be a great alternative, and I'll do it in C. Any help with finding this code or if it doesn't exist, with guidance on how we could write it would be very helpful.

I get the impression that an SDK exists for controlling this robot - is that right? Thanks in advance If you buy the dbpoweramp R13.1 *Reference*, you get the batch ripper and you can download the baxter drivers for the batch ripper, which include command line clients load.exe, unload.exe, reject.exe, etc. Yep, command line clients.

They may work perfectly well outside of dbpoweramp, but I doubt spoon will fully support their use in such a manner, though he may decide to not explicitly forbid it either. In addition, if you send me a PM, I may be able to help with a non-dbpoweramp utility (based on some coding for a project I did a few years back). Hi guys - ive just installed a wireless network adapter to my MF-Digital Scribe EC so as to hide it away in the garage. Im now using remote desktop to access it over my wifi home network - eliminating need for the extra Key/Vid/Mouse.

However i'm having a problem with the destination of the ripped files - i'd like to be able to place them not on the harddrive built into the machine but on my home PC as in tsclient X any suggestions gratefully recieved -- or is this a suggestion for future release!;) cheers brannett. So I'm one of the guys that purchased a NEW Kodak Kiosk Batch Ripper from eBay last week.

Great deal and It looks tough. I got the all software purchased, downloaded and install yesterday (dBpoweramp Reference R13.1 Registered, CD Writer Release 3, Batch Ripper and Kodak Drivers, and perfectmeta AMG) The problem is I'm getting a Error saying: ULCLI Notification Unable to initialize robot shutting down.

I setup on 2 different computers to make sure. I even did the testing commands in the configuration, the Post-Batch CLI was the only function working (It was ejecting the tray). Now do I need to update something on the Kodak Kiosk Hardware for the Robot to respond to the commands?

So I'm one of the guys that purchased a NEW Kodak Kiosk Batch Ripper from eBay last week. Great deal and It looks tough. I got the all software purchased, downloaded and install yesterday (dBpoweramp Reference R13.1 Registered, CD Writer Release 3, Batch Ripper and Kodak Drivers, and perfectmeta AMG) The problem is I'm getting a Error saying: ULCLI Notification Unable to initialize robot shutting down. I setup on 2 different computers to make sure. I even did the testing commands in the configuration, the Post-Batch CLI was the only function working (It was ejecting the tray). Now do I need to update something on the Kodak Kiosk Hardware for the Robot to respond to the commands?

What serial port does the robot show up on? Check the Device Manager (windows-pause/Hardware/Device Manager). Does it show up as COM3? Make sure you always plug the unit into the exact same USB port, or windows will be 'helpful' and assign a different serial port number for each USB port you use, which means having to reconfigure things almost every time you plug it in. Do you have all five command lines set to use the same com port and is it the correct one? If you've messed the commands lines up, change the driver to the manual eject drive, save, then come back and switch to Kodak to get the original, default command lines, and then edit from there. Due to the drive reservation code in the ULCLI, execution order of the commands matters a lot.

For example, if you are using the Test function in the Configuration module, you have to perform a pre-batch before you perform a load. If you've done things out of order, do a post-batch, reboot and proceed normally. Additionally, for the Kodak unit, if it is not obvious which port the USB serial port is connected to, you can compare the device manager's 'Ports' subtree with the kodak disconnected vs. When connected an additional com port should show up. That way you know which com port to use. If there's a concern the robot isn't responding correctly (e.g, the robot controller board is bad), you can open hyperterminal, set the speed to 9600, settings to 8N1 open the connection and type 'V' then 'C'. 'V' should give info on the robot, 'C' should give an 'X'.

Before running the batch ripper, make sure you exit hyperterminal. My IT guys are saying that the Robot is not coming up in the COM Port at all. They were wondering if the robots firmware is gone or does not come up due to it being originally an attachment to a Kodak Kiosk system. So I guess that means that Mirco Orbit CD Firmware needs installed and I probably would have to contact Microboards. Thanks ROB Rob. If you look inside the case, you'll find something amazing: The USB port on the back is just a bracket, that feeds into a 7-port USB hub. That USB hub then connects to two different devices: a USB to RS232 serial cable adapter and a USB to IDE drive adapter.

The serial cable adapter then plugs into the robot controller board and the IDE adapter plugs into the drive. I'd something inside has become disconnected after the USB hub, or perhaps the internal USB to RS232 cable is bad.

I received a couple of these where there were build problems, easily fixable. One like the above situation and another where one of the lifter paddles was mounted 90 degress off of where it should be (easily fixable with a torx and philips screwdriver set). I'm guessing that some point years ago microboards got a very large contract to create these and.may have not done as good a job as they do putting them together (or perhaps it was farmed out). Still Says Unknown on the device(USB Serial Controller), with the good old yellow Questionmark. Very weird But I connected the Com1 port from the back of the desktop Dell, then directly to the DB9 Cable on the inside and also left the USB connected. Did a test on the Kodak Kiosk set-up config, It DID NOT work. Then thought I should try the Micro Orbit set-up test.

I just Set up to start ripping and it's Hauling ARSE. Looks like a possible inside Serial to USB cable issue like you said. I don't know 100%, It's working and I'm leaving it alone. Your AWESOME!!! Thanks for the info.

Still Says Unknown on the device(USB Serial Controller), with the good old yellow Questionmark. Very weird But I connected the Com1 port from the back of the desktop Dell, then directly to the DB9 Cable on the inside and also left the USB connected.

Did a test on the Kodak Kiosk set-up config, It DID NOT work. Then thought I should try the Micro Orbit set-up test.

I just Set up to start ripping and it's Hauling ARSE. Looks like a possible inside Serial to USB cable issue like you said. I don't know 100%, It's working and I'm leaving it alone.

Your AWESOME!!! Thanks for the info. ROB Hmm, if the USB device is seen but is 'not working' in the device manager, then you might just need the correct Prolific or FTDI driver for the USB to serial bridge.

That might have been the problem all along! You can use the Microboards driver, but with one caveat.

With the Microboards driver, you'll never be able to rip the last 5 discs without manual intervention. Because, for kiosk use, they modified the sensor to start returning an error code after loading the fifth disc instead after the last (or on the first 'empty' shot).

Presumably, this would be so that the retail location would get a 'discs running low' indicator so that they could restock it before the customer had to be delayed. The Microboards driver sees that as a failed load and stops (though you can tell it to resume, I think). The Kodak driver starts keeping count and gives different beep sounds depending on if the disc is the fifth, fourth, third, second or last before it tells you it is empty. In general, though: congratulations on your new ripper bot! I also purchased one of the Kodak MicroOrbit robots from ebay which arrived last night. I've been playing around with it for a few hours, and here are my experiences so far.

* Getting it to run on Vista was not a slam dunk. I couldn't get the batch ripper configuration file changes to stick. I went into the configuration screen and edited the 5 command lines to use the com port that the unit showed up on (COM5), and clicked configure. If I then went into Batch Ripper and started a batch, I would get the ULCLI error saying it couldn't communicate with the com port. I noticed that back in the configuration screen the command lines would show COM1 again.

So, I resorted to manually configuring the command files found in Program Files/Illustrate/Batch Ripper with a text editor. I'm not sure if this is a Vista specific problem or not. * Now that I've got the unit working, it does a great job ripping the disks when they get into the tray. * The robot I purchased sometimes has problems knocking the next disk off of the spindle. I can see the 'black finger' comes out and touches the disk when it is supposed to, but it doesn't always bump it enough to knock it off of the spindle. Has anyone else had this problem? I'd like to know if there is a trick to setting the spindle offset in such a way that the disks always fall into the tray when they should.

* I noticed in a previous post that the Kodak units sometimes stop when there are 5 disks left. Is this something I have to worry about if I use the Kodak Kiosk drivers or only if I switch to using the MicroOrbits drivers? Thanks, Todd. I don't use vista, and the batch ripper and the batch ripper configuration are spoon's domain, so I can't speak to this item. I am glad you were able to find a workaround, though.

Good investigating skills! Some Qs: - What do you mean by spindle offset? As far as I am aware, there are no adjustments. You put the discs in, rotate the little spindle lock at the top 180 degrees, invert and it just goes straight in.

- Are you sure that the spindle has been properly set into place? Please scroll back to review my hints and also read the micro-orbit documentation for the official word. - Is the device on a flat surface? The drop capability is very sensitive to the angle of placement. Also, going out on a limb: it may be possible to improve the behavior of an out-of-spec unit by mounting the unit on an incline with the front very slightly lower than the rear.

- Are the discs actually clean? Perhaps some are sticking together. - Does it happen randomly in the middle of a spindle of discs, or does it happen more after some spindle placements than others? - Is it possible the 'wings' used to lift a disc from the tray are misadjusted and perhaps occasionally interfering with a disc drop?

This is only a worry if you use the Microboards-specific driver. If you use the Kodak-specific driver, it works around the problem and also beeps at you with five different beeps as it traverses the last five discs so that you know, ahead of time, that a spindle refill is necessary. One silly question: you are putting the spindle in place with the arrow pointing forward and fully aligned with the three hex screws on the top of the hopper? It's a silly question because I think it'd fail 100% of the time if you had it rotated to one of the two other possible positions. -brendan Yep. I figured out that the arrow pointed forward on my own:). My problem seems to be fine adjustment problem.

Hopefully I can solve it with a couple sheets of paper under the back end of the unit. I'll let you know. I'm examining the mechanism on one of mine at the moment. Try placing the bottom of the stack (when in the unit) at about eye level and watch from the side. If you have the upper ring of the spindle/stack placed correctly, the front of the stack is slightly tipped about 2 CDs width lower than the back of the stack and the back of the stack is caught on the ~45 degree arc of black plastic, which keeps the rear slightly elevated and in-line with the push lever.

Takes practice, and always watch the first few discs to make sure they are a) dropping and b) dropping singley. If they do, then the rest of the stack should be OK.

I am running a batch right now that seems to be working. The first few test batches I did were with about 5 discs. I think that when the spindle gets lighter, it doesn't always sit down far enough for the 'finger' to eject the discs.

I'm on disc 5 of about 40 right now. I'll let you know if I have problems as I get down to the last 5 disks. Yeah, that points to a placement issue. I *suspect* you won't have problems once it gets started correctly, even with the last five. What might be happening is that the extra weight of a half to full spindle helps the settle-in-place process, whereas a small number of discs may kind of catch in a non-optimal position without the additional weight to push them into place. You might also consider using three or four fingers to gently (gently!) press down evenly on the platter after loading.

Just recognize that if you press and shift, or press too hard, you may cause discs to fall out. On another note, do you have any suggestions on how to speed up the post-load/pre-MetaData lookup wait time? Using the Kodak robot, I seem to be waiting a couple of minutes before the MetaDat lookup occurs. Note: I have turned off all AutoPlay functionality in the Vista control panel. For this issue, perform some tests with all of the metadata options turned off, just see what the 'only accuraterip' baseline is.

My experience is that this drive+bridge is inherently slow to recognize discs, taking about 45 seconds from tray pull in to disc seen mounted in explorer on my day to day laptop (haven't tried it on a clean workstation). Not sure if the issue is the drive or bridge, but it's likely the drive. This is one reason I've asked spoon to allow the disc recognition time in the batch ripper to be user-adjustable, so that it won't inadvertantly reject discs from slow to mount drives. For now, I'm just going to ensure that the load command for the kodak units either waits for the disc to be recognized internally or includes a long delay after load before exiting and return control to the batch ripper. Of course, one could always try swapping bridges or drives.but the latter inherently risky (have to cut notches in the tray and alignment matters a lot).

-brendan PS - there's also a similar delay in the unload/reject command between the pick+tray-close and the drop. This is currently in place to ensure that the pick worked and the tray closed. I may release a version that uses timing only, instead which could speed this up but be at slightly added risk for dropping the disc with the tray open (bad) or moving (horrible due to possible picker/tray collision).

(replying to myself) Though, I do have to say, the Teac CD-W552DA *does* appear to handle scratched discs pretty well (my setup: accuraterip + secure + ultra 1 minimum + c2 + 256KB cache guesstimate). I was just ripping a scratched up Motown CD-R I have to return to my ex.

Some tracks had over 100 frames to re-read. And so far I've only heard one click on the worst track (it was marked insecure, of course).

So, the kodak-bundled teac seems to handle good CDs in ~2 minutes and also seems to handle problem discs that take longer than 30 minutes pretty well. -brendan PS - I'll also note that, a year or two ago the very same units would suddenly disconnect their own USB connection when using dbpoweramp's cd ripper with C2 on when dealing with scratched discs.something about the access pattern drove them crazy. I think spoon's recent changes to make the drive IO somewhat friendlier to unreliable usb bridges has helped quite a bit. Does anyone have a copy of the 'Microboards driver' or 'Kodak driver' that have been mentioned? Also, does anyone know what model of DVD drive is used in the stand-alone DVD version of the MicroOrbit MLDV1000? All I've been able to find is that it's a Pioneer drive.

I would think that this would pretty much be a drop-in replacement to allow the Kodak kiosk duplicator to do DVDs. Drivers are on this page (you'll need to scroll down): You can swap drives of course, but keep in mind that, in addition to the normal alignment of the drive to have the tray placement correct and the sometime necessary removal of the drive faceplate, you'll also need to cut matching notches in the tray for the lifter wings. Drives have a 'track' for the tray open/close sprockets, and some have this track right at the edge of the tray (won't work), while others have it further in (will work). Obtain a Kodak unit. Turn it upside down or on its side. Eject the tray.

You'll see what I mean. Then just find another drive where the track is at least 3mm (or so, haven't measured) away from the tray edge and you're set. My Sony VGP-XL1B(3) was ripping perfectly this morning.

At the end of that batch I emptied it and moved it a few feet further away from my computer. I then tried to use a 15ft FireWire cable but it didn't work (it works in my recording studio though). I had to move it back where it was before and reconnected everything with the original 6ft cable. It DOESN'T work now!:( The drives are not seen under My Computer like before (I'm running XP PRO SP3), FreeChange doesn't see it and neither does Batch Ripper. I checked the RSM service and it's set to Manual and was not running: OK I then tried 4 different 6ft cables to no avail.

I tried both plugs on back and all the ones on my PC. No other change was made than described above.

The changer does its self-test when turned on and I can load/unload several discs. Please help me! I'm running out of ideas.:cry: Thanks! I've had similar issues, but they have resolved themselves in one way or another, without any good explanation why or why not. Oh, that's disturbing Porcus. My Sony was working so well after giving up on my Powerfile C200.

Has anyone here has ever had any problems with the FireWire connectors themselves at the back of the Sony units? I now suspect that just (carefully) unplugging/replugging the FW cable might have broken something of the FW controller board (cold solder?).:headbang: Thanks for any help!

It's been almost 21 hours! I am beside myself with anticipation! -brendan Thanks for all the help with getting the Kodak robot up and running. I've had it running on a continuous batch for 30 hours and 48 minutes. It occasionally skips loading discs, but if I let it keep running it will begin to pick them up again. I'm not sure if the spindle alignments on my unit are just a bit off.

What I'm finding now is that my aging cd collection has many scratched and unreadable discs (66 discs ripped successfully, 15 discs rejected due to errors, 21 discs failed to load on the current batch). Most of the discs failed to load are due to a long wait time on load, and if I put them back in the stack, they load successfully the second time around. Overall, I'm really happy with dBPA and the batch ripping functionality. I'm also really happy with the robot. It is great to be able to leave the system running while I am away. I can't imagine trying to rip my collection by hand. But, I'm definitely in the market for a cd scratch repair system now.

Any suggestions? I've been looking at the aleratec and skip dr. Disc repair tools. Todd- Before we go to the scratched disc fixing, I can probably help with timeouts causing the failed loads by suggesting a minor adjustment of the kodak script.

Open this file using notepad.exe: C: Program Files Illustrate dBpoweramp BatchRipper Loaders Ko dak Kiosk 50 disc Load DefaultCmdLine.txt Actually make a backup of it first, then edit it.:) Make sure Format/Word Wrap is *not* checked before editing, because the lines are very very long and we don't want notepad to auto-wrap, which will break the script. Hit ctrl-f to Find, then type --sleep=2 then hit enter, which should bring you to the post-load post-close sleep command (note there are two --sleep=2 instances, we want the first one). Hit right arrow to unselect the nine chars of text, hit left arrow to move back to right after the 2, hit backspace once to erase the 2 and then type 10 to change the 2 to a 10. We change this.

--closeblind --sleep=2 --unbindtodrive. --closeblind --sleep=10 --unbindtodrive. Do a File/Save from the menu. Restart the batch ripper.

This change ensures the code does inform the batch ripper that the disc was inserted for at least 10 seconds after it was inserted. Should be enough time for it to spin up and start recognition before the batch ripper regains control and *should* help to prevent the batch ripper from timing out. You can experiment with different values. This change ensures the code does inform the batch ripper that the disc was inserted for at least 10 seconds after it was inserted. Should be enough time for it to spin up and start recognition before the batch ripper regains control and *should* help to prevent the batch ripper from timing out.

You can experiment with different values. Er, I meant to type 'This change ensures the code does *not* inform the batch ripper.' Basically, add a delay before telling the batch ripper that it can look at the drive.to ensure the initial spin-up is not interrupted.