Problems with Mac mini superdrive

[lisper]

I'm running kjams on an older Mac Mini, model 1176, core 2 duo, 2 GB RAM, running snow leopard. I'm having two problems.

First, kjams complains that the machine only has 2GB of RAM and that I need 4. Seriously? I can run Microsoft Office, for crying out loud. Why on earth do I need 4GB to play karaoke?

But the bigger problem I'm having is that KJams completely barfs when I try to use a CD+G in the internal superdrive. I insert the disk and try to play a song and it says: "There was an I/O error reading the disk. Perhaps it is scratched?"

Well, no, it isn't scratched, because I can put the same disk in an external drive and it works. So I click "cancel" and try again, and this time it says: "Unix error. Reading CD table of contents 'Input/Output error'."

But here's the worst part: once this has happened, I can no longer eject the disk. I quit KJams, eject the disk from the desktop, and the icon goes away. But the disk won't eject. The only way I can get it out is to reboot the machine. The eject key doesn't work. Disk Utility doesn't work. drutil tray eject doesn't work.

This happens consistently. When I got the machine it had Lion installed, and the same thing happened, so it's almost certainly not the OS.

[dave]

Yes, kJams needs 4 gigs of ram. Microsoft Office doesn't have to load the meta data for 100,000 songs (for music stores) *and* the data for your songs too, and keep them in RAM. kJams uses a hand-written database made for karaoke (not the one that iTunes uses either, also iTunes uses web pages to display their music stores, and does NOT load them into RAM, so even that is not a fair comparison). Sorry about that. kJams really wants a modern computer to run on.

Did you look to see if your drive is compatible? What is the make and model? Problems like this are almost always hardware problems.

There are also some discs, yes, discs, which cause the OS to lock them up and be unable to eject. This is a MacOS problem, not a kJams problem. You can test that theory by quitting kJams and seeing if you still can't eject the disc. If you can't, then you know it's got nothing to do with kJams. They are usually the "dual volume" discs (they show up in the finder with 2 disc icons).

[lisper]

My drive is an Apple Superdrive, the one that is built in to the Mac Mini.

I can read the disk and play the audio in iTunes with no problem.

The disk remains stuck even after KJams has quit.

Even at 100,000 songs, 4GB of RAM is 40k per song. How can you possibly have that much metadata?

[dave]

a "SuperDrive" is a marketing term which doesn't describe the make and model. there are dozens of make and models under the "SuperDrive" moniker, some of which do support CDG, some of which lack the necessary hardware. so, i really do need the make and model info.

to get at that info, please see here:
http://karaoke.kjams.com/wiki/Failed_Burn
see the section called "Disc Burning in System Profiler"

iTunes has nothing to do with kJams. kJams plays "CD+G" discs, not "CD" discs. "CD+G" is a SUPERSET of CD, so if it can play a CD+G it can also play a CD, but NOT the other way around. It's like saying "well, iTunes plays this CD using this drive, so why can't this drive play Blu-Ray movies?", the answer is cuz the hardware isn't there to support it.

The disk remains stuck even after KJams has quit

okay, that is proof that it is not a kJams problem. Was it a dual-volume disc?

Even at 100,000 songs, 4GB of RAM is 40k per song. How can you possibly have that much metadata?

look, i wrote the program myself, by hand, line by line, i even wrote the database. i did the bench marking, i meticulously measured the required specs. I could explain it to you, in programming terms, but I'm not going to, you're just going to have to trust me when i say, you need 4 GIGS of ram. If you don't have it, your performance will suffer.

As a matter of fact, the OS itself will take up 2 gigs of RAM, and kJams wants 3, so in REALITY you want 6 gigs of ram, IF you're not running anything besides kJams. If you run other programs at the same time, and you don't want to page out to VM, you should get a modern computer, which typically comes with 8 GIGS nowadays.

But having said all of that, you can get away with 2 gigs, if you turn OFF all the music stores and keep your library small (say 15k songs), and don't run any other apps. it's just that you might start paging into virtual memory when doing searches.

[lisper]

a "SuperDrive" is a marketing term

Ah, I didn't know that. I thought all superdrives were the same. Turns out my Mini has a Matshita drive, so that explains that. (Bummer.)

So I do have a drive that works, but it's connected to another machine and I can't move it. So... if I paid for the full KJams Lite could I rip my disks and then transfer those ripped songs to the free version running on the Mini? Or would I have to buy two copies of KJams to make that work?

[dave]

yes, you totally can, one kJams license can be activated on two computers. you can rip them on one computer, then network the computers and do "add to library" on the other, navigate (over the network) to the songs on the ripping computer, and pick the "kJams Music" folder there, then pick "copy". then on the ripping computer, delete the "kJams" folder (this will reset the ripping computer back to an empty library)

[lisper]

Good enough. Thanks!

[dave]