From: Josh <rockbox-list_at_foxtail.org>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 10:02:19 -0700 (PDT)

Hello everyone,

The iPod has a nice feature where as soon as you plug in to the
computer, it automatically synchronizes the iPod with the PC. So for
example if you rip or download some songs on the PC they would magically
appear in the mp3 player next time you plugged in.

This would be a very good feature for us to have! Besides syncing
music, it could also be used to automatically backup important documents
etc. for those like me who aren't good at remembering to do so (in other
words you could keep C:\My Documents synchronized with a "/pc/My
Documents" directory on the Archos).

To synchronize files from one drive to another or over the network,
there is a very good tool called Unison (information at
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/). I believe Unison would
work already to perform the synchronization, but it has to be invoked
manually. On Windows the command looks something like:
C:\> unison c:\music f:
(if f: is the Archos drive).

The question is how to improve this so the sync is triggered
automatically when the jukebox is plugged in. The autoplay mechanism
used in CDROMs would be fine. It launches a program upon insertion of a
CD.

Autoplay is available for USB storage devices, but it appears to require
both 1) removable device [yes, got it] and 2) removable media [no :(] to
work out-of-the-box. My guess is that the USB driver could be convinced
to enable Autoplay (by someone more knowledgable than I about Windows
programming), and if this were true we could use that mechanism to
launch a script to synchronize our chosen directories automatically upon
plug-in.

Here is some Autoplay information at Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/bus/USB/usbfaq.mspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/autoplay/autoplay2k_using.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/autoplay/autoplay2k_cookbook.asp

Anyone have comments on the merit/feasibility of this idea?
Received on 2003-05-08