DC300 Database Information

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Find the files, drivers, tracks, films, singers etc on your disc collection at the click of a button. Protect your investment.

1: Start by selecting the device ID. If you have more than one DC300 connected this is where you'd select which one you're currently working with.
2: With this done you then assign a slot number by typing it in or by clicking "Empty Slots" and choosing from the list of available unoccupied slot numbers.



3: Next you select a disk category. Each of the categories can be edited with a double click or you can create a new category by simply typing it in the box. Next insert the name in "Title" box and if required the "Barcode" box and click "OK" and you're done. 4: Double click the entry to align the carousel and lower the collection arm and place the CD on it ready to be ingested.
Barcode is best used for software serial numbers

Repeat the procedure until all your disks are logged and you're done. You don't have to put all you software discs together, music discs together as when you search the database will list them irrespective of where they are in the database.





Another nice touch is the ability to get the directory data directly from each disk (field 1 "Content") by placing it in your chosen drive and clicking "Get". One more right click and you can get the all the sub-directories, files and folders too, and if this isn't enough all the detected files and folders are fully searchable!
The field below this (field 2 "Remark") is a free form data entry box where you can add just about any remarks you want, like who you've lent the disk to or where the No CD patch is located and so on and again all the data in this field is searchable.



The search function is actually pretty impressive. You can do a full search by title, Barcode, Content or remark and by machine ID.


So what I'm saying is if you know you've got a file on one of your CDs hidden two levels deep and called "me drunk" you can type it in, find it and eject it in literally seconds. How handy is that? And it doesn't stop there. If you have a music CD and you want to record the track details you can click "Get CDDB" which, provided you're connected to the 'Net, connects to www.freedb.org, grabs the track info and then adds it to the remarks field (below). And of course as I keep saying it's all searchable.



The only oversight here is that once the track info appears in the "Get CDDB" window (below) there are no clues about what you should do with it. It's only by clicking "X" and closing the window that you're asked if you want to overwrite the information whereby selecting "Yes" adds the data to the "Remarks" field.
And if you want to personalise things even further you can associate scans of your disk sleeve, the disk itself or even your own artwork with each disk in the database and thumb through them at your leisure. And if you've got a lot of disks you need to remove from the DC300 in one session you can use the "Multi Selection Eject" function where you set the disks you want out and it cycles through and ejects them waiting about 6 seconds at each for you to remove it. A nice idea but one that probably doesn't save a whole lot of time over doing them individually. One thing that might make this function more useful is if the titles chosen remained selected even after this window is closed so you could run it again to put the disks back when you've done. You'd need a "Clear" button to deselect all your selected titles ready for a new session but I doubt that's much of a programming challenge.
Another minor gripe is that although you tune the look and feel of the database software to your liking by selecting things like language, font, font colour and so on the settings are global. It'd be kind of nice to assign a specific font or font colour to individual categories or disk types to make them easier to locate by eye.
And although the physical security of the DC300 may be a little lackluster it's good to see DACAL have included a password function with the database to keep prying eyes away from your collection.
Fire it up with the password set and your greeted with a colourful refusal.



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How to move the Dacal dc300 database when changing computers, backing up info etc.
Please follow the steps to move database from your old computer to a new computer.



1) (New computer), Install CD Library software to new computer.

2) (Old computer), go to C:\Program Files\CD Library

3) (Old computer), there are 8 folders and 2 files you need to move from old computer to new computer.

8 folders: dbf, dbfbak, CdInfo, CdInfbak, Remark, Remakbak, Preview, DBFEmpty

2 files: dbid.txt and Cdtype.txt

4) Copy these 8 folders and 2 files to new computer C:\Program Files\CD Library

5) Connect CD Library machine(s) to new computer.

6) Open software and use them.