Dacal Cd Library Software Download
Not much to say about the device, it holds your CDs/DVDs and helps you find the right one when needed. I ordered this back in 2007 so I'm a few years late with the review (my bad). I use it on and of now, it still works even though the quality of the product leaves something to be desired. It looks cheap (contrary to the price) the buttons for manual insertion of the CD slot number look like they've been ripped out of the store credit/debit card readers. Having said all that however as I mentioned after 4 years of moderate use it is still working. Windows OS had been updated to Windows 7 (albeit 32 bit version) and it's still detected and works just fine. Software also works on the new version of windows although it is poorly designed and takes a long, long, long, long, lon.
Dacal Cd Library Driver for Windows 7 32 bit, Windows 7 64 bit, Windows 10, 8, XP. Uploaded on 4/7/2018, downloaded 511 times, receiving a 83/100 rating by 100 users. DACAL TECH Optical Disc Archive System Software Define Storage Storage Soulution Provider Navigation. Home; Contact; About.
(you get the idea) time to do anything with. The manufacturer's website seems more or less dead with numerous links no longer working, luckily I've had no need of their support which is a horror show according to the reports of other customers. Ok so I have been looking hard for a unit that can hold as many CD's as possible in the smallest amount of space. I knew I wanted something automatic for the coolness factor and because it only makes sense when you have a large collection of DVD or CD media to oraganize. I searched pretty thoroughly and found that the DC-300 by Dacal is the only thing I remotely close (which is odd considering how many people have large CD or DVD collections). I decided to order one which was shipped through BesTradeUSA and recieved it with no problems.
Right out of the box it's pretty much what I expected, no real surprises. Musou stars. I've heard other reviewers comment on the weight so the fact that it is light didn't catch me off guard. The external color is beige although Dacal now makes one in grey.
All of the materials were in the box and seemed well packaged. I plugged it in and that's when things got hairy.
I noticed right away that the numbers '505' were flashing on the display which looked suspiciously like an error code. I fooled with the unit for awhlie and could not get it to work. It just kept flashing 505.
Dacal Cd Library Dc 101 Software Download
The instruction manual was no help at all and has been translated poorly. There are illustrations of the dc-300 in the manual but the instructions themselves are for a DC-100!!!!
I also checked the website included with the software which provided no help either. Did a search on google for the error code and found out through a tech forum that 505 stands for SOS, indicating an error.
The website suggested taking it apart to adjust the release arm. I took the unit aprt, which was no cake walk, and found that the wires going to the release arm motor were completely disconected! Looks like a magnet installed near the motor to shunt interferance had enough weight to pull the leads loose during shipping. Soldered the leads back on to the motor and put it back together. It wasn't the most difficult task but it comes apart and goes together weird.
Once reassembled it worked as advertised. It is a pretty neat little unit, despite the obvious design flaw, and am happy with it. The software is very straight forward and easy to use.
I would give it 5 stars if I wouldn't have gotten pissed off right off the bat because it was broke and had to spend 2 hours fixing it. I am also curious to see how long it lasts, especially with my hasty solder job. The contraption itself is not bad, but the software is inexcusably bad. Aside for poor functionality, no help, inaccurate user manual, it also crashes losing all your input sine the last backup. There is no way to export your data to a text or spreadsheet file. While the program does add 'contents' of the disc to the database, it only picks up the top level folder.
If you want use this device off line, without the software it would work ok, but it's not worth the price. I am sending mine back for a refund.
I've had a DC300 for a couple of years. Once I got Disc Manager software, the DC300 became one of my most useful possessions. (The CD Library software is horrible.) Unfortunately, recently my computer stopped recognizing the DC300 - it said 'USB device not recognized'. I tried another PC and had the same problem.
I wrote to Dacal asking for support; they responded promptly and suggested I try a few things, which I did, but none worked. Subsequently I wrote to Dacal FIVE times and just asked whether the unit could be repaired, and they DID NOT RESPOND AT ALL to any of my emails. I think the DC300 is a good idea, but I cannot recommend a product made by a company that ignores its customers when problems arise. I Like the DC300 alot,too bad the software dosen't work properly.
THE CDDB GIVES YOU THE CHOICE TO CHOOSE WHAT EVER DRIVE YOU WANT, TO GO TO THE INTERNET TO GET IMFORMATION ABOUT YOUR CD,BUT ONLY ONE DEVICE WILL WORK.EG. DRIVE D: F: E: will only let you use drive d:.Will only let you use the main cds drives,not the slaves. Twain device to capture images of your cd jackets only works some times.Constantly getting error messages. I would switch to another companys software,Disc Manger1.1 except that that companys software dose not allow you to make hard copies of information that you have retrieved from the disks to print out.But besides that their program has no problems.
Dacal Technology DC-101 CD Library Review date: 13 June 2002. Last modified 03-Dec-2011. Do you need to organise a bunch of 120mm optical discs? CDs, CD-ROMs, DVDs, et cetera? If not, then move along. There's nothing to see here. If you do have serried ranks of motley jewel cases, DVD cases, paper and plastic sleeves, and sitting all over the place, though, then this giant plastic doughnut may be exactly what you need.
The DC-101 CD Library is a motorised 150-disc carousel gadget which can deliver any disc to your hand in a few seconds. It works via a simple turn-the-knob interface, or under PC control via USB.
And it works with every kind of 120mm disc. Music CDs, DVD movies, CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, games for, you name it. No 78mm baby-discs or laserdiscs, please, but everything else just drops in. Note: This is, essentially, just a fancy storage box. It can't read CD-ROMs or play audio CDs. All it does is spin round and prod out the disc you've asked for. But at $AU198 delivered, it's not ludicrously expensive, for what you get.
All of the discs live in the slots of this turntable. The Library comes partially assembled, but it's easy to attach the lid and sliding door - if you want to fill the System up quickly, it's easier to do so with the lid off, anyway. One CD Library, fully populated with random discs from my I'm Gonna Make A Out Of These One Day box. You don't have to fill all 150 slots to use the Library, of course, but it looks cooler that way. To select a disc manually, you first have to connect the Library to its included wall-wart power adapter. Then you just turn the knob until the green LED readout indicates the appropriate slot number, and push the knob in.
The turntable then turns clockwise, fairly quickly, to the slot before the one you asked for, and then advances slowly to line up that one slot. If the sliding dust-guard door is open, the selected disc is then pushed out a bit by an ejector lever. If the door's closed, a microswitch tells the ejector not to do anything. With the door open, pressing on the knob without changing the disc number you've selected will toggle the eject lever position. You can't dial up a new disc without de-ejecting the last one. There's a keylock as well, by the way, which is about as secure as the keylock on every other disc box out there.
You get two vaguely key-shaped pieces of stamped metal with the Library, but don't sweat it if you lose them; pretty much anything that fits in the keyhole will be sufficient to operate this single- pseudo-lock. You get a paper directory booklet with the Storage System, with 150 numbered boxes to fill in.
This could come in handy in some situations, I suppose. But you're not expected to use the Library as a manual storage system with its contents scribbled in a book.
You're expected to use the USB cable, and the database software. This simple little database-and-control package (melodiously titled 'CD Library DC 101 Application') is what makes the Library worth using. It completely lacks any way to get disc information from elsewhere - you can't import your own database, and there's no neat-o (or ) hookup for indexing a bunch of music CDs or movies the fast way. But unless you're changing your Library-stored CDs incessantly, this shouldn't be a terrible handicap. The software's own data input features are likely to be adequate. You can, of course, just enter disc names and categories manually.
Dacal Cd Library Dc 101 Software Download
For data discs, though, there's also a Content function that lets you attach discs' directory listings to their database entry; you scan the disc in your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive before you put it in the Library. You can also attach free-form Remarks to disc listings.
There's also a Preview pane that lets you attach any image you've scanned or otherwise imported to a disc's listing. And, of course, you can manually scroll through listings sorted by different fields, or search the database to find the one you're after. The keyword search for the Content and Remark fields isn't what you'd call deep, but it ought to be good enough. Well, as long as you don't have too many hundreds of discs to scan through, that is. A single Library can only hold 150 discs. But, thanks to USB, you can connect as many Libraries as you like - up to 128 of them, in theory at least. The software understands multiple Libraries; there's an 'ID' drop-down menu that lets you manually pick which one you're talking about when you add new discs to the database, and the search functions work across all of them.
Well, I presume they do, anyway; I only had one Library to test. Realistically, I strongly doubt anybody's going to be in the market for 128 Libraries. You're likely to find $AU25,344 worth of the things (Aus PC will probably knock them down to you for $AU25,000 if you ask nicely, and may even throw in a USB hub or two), containing 19,200 discs, to be a little tricky to manage. But if you need to index, say, a thousand or so discs, and have them all accessible in short order, then a bank of Libraries will do it pretty elegantly. And they'll do it without taking up as much space as you might think, since Libraries can be stacked on top of each other. The documentation recommends you not stack Libraries more than five high, lest Something Terrible happen.
Apart from Libraries being straight-out smashed when a totem pole of the things falls over, the Library design also won't stop discs from falling out of their slots if you tilt the carousel drastically, and that could get ugly fast. The disc database information is automatically saved as you enter it, and there's a one-step backup system for it, too, that lets you define where the backup should go. The software's definitely not a shining example of Win32 coding - it has old-style file requesters with 'PROGRA1'-ish file names, for instance - but it does the job, and seems to work fine in Windows XP. It's alleged to be compatible with all Windows flavours from Win98 up.
There are no Mac OS drivers for the DC-101. Speed How long the Library takes to deliver the disc you've asked for depends on where it starts and where it's going. It always turns clockwise, and it's numbered anticlockwise, so it has to do almost a complete turn to go from slot two to slot one. But the location tracking system it uses has no memory to speak of, and also has crummy small-step resolution. So it'll still do a complete turn, plus a bit, if you ask to go from disc three to disc four.
Because of this, many lookup operations take a bit more than eight seconds. The disc-eject process accounts for about 1.5 seconds of that. Lookups that don't require the carousel to move terribly far, but which do require it to move far enough that the electronics can figure out where the carousel is without having to turn it right around, are faster.
Including eject time, the fastest operation I saw was a seek from slot 30 to slot 60, which took only five seconds. Seeking from slot 150 to slot 30, however, required a 1.2-turn operation that took nine and a half seconds including eject time. On the plus side, plugging in the USB cable doesn't stop the Library's knob from working, so you can always manually dial-a-disc if you like. The software also has a self-test mode that causes the Library to do random seeks over and over.
I don't know whether multiple Libraries will all random-seek at once if you use this feature. If they do, it'll look quite impressive. Looking inside I was interested to see how the Library worked - particularly after I noticed that it's possible to remove the turntable, replace it in a different orientation, and still have the gadget identify slots correctly. Remove the turntable, and you can see the Library's works. It's not particularly complex - drive motor assembly, eject motor assembly, two photosensors to detect the turntable position. Look at the underside of the turntable, and you can see how the locating system works. The outer ring has regularly spaced photo-interrupter tabs, but the inner ring doesn't; the inner photodetector is therefore what's used to pick the turntable's orientation, and after that's been done, the outer ring is used to count forward to the requested number.
Unfortunately, the Library doesn't have enough brain to remember where it was last, so it has to do a full re-seek every time. Then again, maybe that's a feature, not a bug; it's possible (though inadvisable) to manually rotate the turntable even when it hasn't been removed. Doing that would put the thing permanently out of whack, if it didn't notice the unauthorised turn.
Crunching numbers If all you want is a ton of data in one place, vast numbers of CDs don't make a lot of sense. 150 CDs only contain 102.5 gigabytes of data, even if they're all full 700Mb discs. Given that you're not likely to have a whole 700Mb on every disc, it's fair to say that a '120Gb' hard drive (whose real formatted capacity will be below 110Gb) will give you comfortably more storage. That drive will currently cost you $AU517, delivered, from Aus PC Market.
150 decent quality CD-Rs will cost you from about $AU180 to about $AU300, depending on what 'decent quality' means to you. Add the price of the Dacal library gadget and you're up around the price of the hard drive already, without factoring in the price of the CD writer. Of course, if you're in the market for a CD Library, you probably already have a CD writer. Both of the above options have disadvantages, of course. The hard drive is more prone to damage than the CDs.
And if you leave it running all the time, it will eventually fail. On the other hand, data on the CDs will be far more annoying to get at than data on the hard drive, even with a CD Library delivering the right disc to your hand. And storing files bigger than 700Mb on CDs is a pain. And you can't make the CD Library network accessible. And it's not what you'd call super-portable.
And, most importantly, if you don't already have your data on CDs, this option puts quite a lot of disc-burning in your future. Go for, with 4.7 billion byte capacity per disc, and you can fit a heck of a lot more data in one Library.
More than 656 gigabytes, if you fill every disc. You can't get that much space from any single hard drive; you'd need a RAID array. Tape drives with epically monstrous capacity exist, but if you don't already know how much they cost, you really don't want to. The low price for DVD-R discs at the moment (not the DVD+R used by the drive above) is about $US125 for a hundred. Here in Australia you're probably talking at least $AU400 to fill a 150-disc gadget. So it's not bad value on a dollars-per-megabyte basis, even if you include the price of a DVD writer.
If you put a high value on your time then, again, burning scores of DVDs will cost you a great deal more. But if you've already got 'em, and you don't need access to the data in a split second, then it's a real option. The intended market for the CD Library is people who already have a ton of 120mm discs cluttering up their workspace or DJ booth or home theatre or whatever, and can't move whatever's on them to another medium. The CD Library offers a pretty elegant way to store these things, even without a computer. With a computer, it's a still better idea, especially if you've got several hundred discs to deal with. At almost $AU200, this isn't a product most people will be buying with their pocket change. But if you've got enough discs to fill one or more Libraries, then they may be just what you've been waiting for.
The new model The is the DC-101's successor. Looks better.