Help needed with older version

[panflute]

I am a musician with an older laptop running windows 7.
Many years ago someone gave me a plugin that allowed
Winamp to bring up my scanned music that I wrote when
I clicked on a song I wanted to play. I have over 800 songs
in my Playlist.
This was about 25 years ago. Needless to say, I cannot
remember how to do anything in winamp: how to edit or
add or subtract from the Playlist, how to add my scanned
music, how to alter the views, how to bring up the scanned
music in another laptop I have.
I wish to speak with someone who is VERY familiar with
Winamp (an older version) and the plug-ins and the Winamp
views, etc etc. because I want to add new music to my
repitoire and link those tracks to my scanned music.
Of course I'm willing to pay for your time. I really need
someone who knows the ins and outs and is very
experienced. I figure it would probably take a few hours
on zoom or Duo to accomplish what I need.

Thanks for reading.
Abe Betesh

[panflute]

Ps

I currently am using Winamp version 5.56 (x86) July 2009

[SudenKapala]

The plugin you mention, I don't know.

With 'scanned', do you mean 'added to the Media Library'? (Or does it bring up graphics of your scanned tablature / musical notes?)

You can simply drag'n'drop music and playlist files into the main playlist; editing it works with right-click, and with the keys delete, shift, ctrl, and the arrows. The tiny "manage playlist" lets you save playlists.

Adding music to the Med Lib goes through: menu, preferences, media library; look for the tab 'local media', and add the folders that contain the desired music. (Make sure there's lots of metal and soundtrack scores in it! For your own good). Then, hit 'scan again' or some such. (I'm doing this from memory; ask if sth is unclear.)

I am very familiar with 5v52 and 5v57 (which are undoubtedly quite similar to the intermediary 5v56) -- but only in some limited, basic areas. (E.g., not streaming, nor advanced playlist or med lib functions.)

Also, views and plugins are relatively unused by me. So, I may not be whom you need. Still, I'll share my knowledge.

Both of those versions (and most others) can be, more or less, made portable (i.e., transferable to another machine via simple zip/USB/copy). You must then also copy the AppData folder -- unless you remove/rename "paths.ini" (which will make wAmp start saving the settings in its program folder; the original AppData setts can subsequently be dumped over the new/raw/empty setts in the prog folder). I make extensive use of that.
Be sure to make backups of both prog and AppData folders, AND extensively experiment with all this first on another machine, before you change anything in your primary version! There are some quircks, you could lose your old settings and/or have a hard time restoring backups.

But! It might be easier just installing wAmp on the secondary machine and copy only the AppData and plugins...

I'm not sure if this is (part of) what you meant? Hope it helps.

[panflute]

Reply

SudenKapala
Thanks for you reply. Let me study this a bit and I'll get back to you.
And yes, by scanned music I mean the music that I composed and wrote out
for a particular track which appears when Winamp plays that track, instead
of the album art or whatever normally comes up. There is a plugin
that someone gave me that allows that to happen. I am a flute player and
I read that music as the track is playing. Since it was so many years
ago I don't remember how to add tracks and link the scanned music.

Also, manipulating the view is extremely important because somstimes
I lose the view of the scanned music and cannot get it back. That is why
I have 2 identical laptops and 4 identical SSD drives as backups.

I'll be working on this. Thanks again.
Abe

PS
I play classical and jazz. Here are a couple of my tracks:

https://app.box.com/s/q022td57ddjyc9i7gley2vunby0s52my

https://app.box.com/s/30q269yoxj2q7qxo9d2l1buxs3s19u2e

[SudenKapala]

Hi, Pan.

It took me a while to write this down. If I assume correctly, you do have one working setup, but want to build a safety net?

The below strategy does not (yet) address the question how to add more/new music with tablature. However, it describes a sure way to 'copy' your whole system (incl. wAmp and/or all your music).

If you have identical systems, it becomes fully viable to make a partition image of your primary machine's operating system, and 'transplant' it unto the secondary unit (and/or the backup DDs).
This ensures continued operation within a few minutes of a disk SNAFUBAR. (Just take out the other laptop, or put in a reserve DD.)

IMO, for system images, it is very handy to have separate system ("C") and data ("D") partitions, and keep all data (audio, video, photos, documents) on the "D" partition. In your case, though, it could be a tactic to actually include the music in such an image. This will greatly increase payload (size) and redundancy, but it might yield even higher continuity for your purpose.

I have used older versions of both Symantec/Norton Ghost and Acronis for this purpose. Both take a considerable learning curve, but have proven extremely reliable across my machine park.

(The drive letter -- C/D -- can be different; and probably WILL be different inside the environment in which you'd conduct the imaging ops. It's good practice to give each partition a name/label, so you can recognize them. Also familiarize yourself thoroughly with their respective sizes.)

Having a secondary systemband multiple DDs, you really have no reason not to experiment with this, I'd say! (Of course, I could be totally wrong. Never ever experiment with partitioning or imaging on disks that contain unique data!)

Of special interest, before I forget to mention it in the future (if need be): w7 (often? Always?) uses a small secondary "System Reserved" partition which complicates imaging operations -- but only a little bit. (I've also seen this w/ w8, but only seldomly.) It concerns a tiny Active partition that allows booting from the main, large system ("C") partition. This also needs to be imaged and reproduced on the target disk. It can be made at least as small as 100MB, but usually is 350MB.

In Acronis (which is the easiest and your first bet IMO; I use it since 2011), you can image both the OS and SysRes partitions in one go, and likewise reset both in a subsequent session (or same, even, if both disks are attached).

I have no actual experience with Ghost for w7. ("Only" for w98, wME, w2k, wXP, w8, and maybe a Linux experiment or two... since 2006... so that's what I mean when I say, 'reliable'.)

Both img apps have a built-in validation tool, which I hope saves and can test a checksum (but they are really, really fast operations). I suggest using that, both after creating and before resetting an image. (But that doesn't deter me from also using an external, possibly totally redundant, MD5 check -- which for my systems takes much longer to create/test against.)

Oh. And: compress. Always compress your images. No reason not to.

[SudenKapala]

Addendum

The above post describes, roughly, an alternative to using wAmp as a portable assett (which I told about in my earlier post). Each option (and there may be others) has (dis)advantages.
One disadvantage of images might be, that by transplanting and using an image (made from system A) on system B, you'll have two systems with system A's Windows activation / licence key. When going online, that's asking for trouble.

However, I believe it is possible to subsequently change back the product key on system B (replace with its original one), so everything is in order again. (I've never had to do this, myself.)

Or -- if you don't need to go online -- you can simply "air-gap" the system (i.e., not connect it to any network; preferably by disabling all network interfaces).

Always make sure to have a backup (image) of the original system of your secondary machine, which contains the original credentials.
And/or simply lay aside the original DD of that system, and create a copy of the primary machine on a new DD.

Let us know which strategy you persue -- reinstalling wAmp, copying it, or images... Or sth else, of course!