Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geek Speak => Topic started by: syhprum on 24/08/2009 17:49:42
-
As I have previously mentioned Wimdows 7 time and dates incoming files so that recorded WxToIMG satellite pictures cannot be assosiated with correct maps.
The use of Sun Virtual XP within windows 7 is a partial cure to the problem but is rather laborious as the files must first be input to USB device and the the computer switched to XP to display them.
I find it impossible to get sound card active on Sun XP (maybe because it is an AMD elite 7050) so that files can be input directly it must be done via the USB device that seems to be the only common element between Windows 7 and XP.
Any Ideas how to stop Windows 7 date stamping or the sound card working ?.
PS I have anti virus software setup on both Windows 7 And XP are two lots needed ?.
-
Uninstall Win7, that'll stop the unwanted date stamping
-
I must have missed your earlier post about the Windows 7 time and date problem with these files - what exactly is the problem? Does Windows 7 appear to be appending the time and date as part of the filename? Depending upon the filesystem being used, things like the creation time & date, the time & date last accessed and the time and date last modified are routinely recorded for every file, but I can't see how this would be a problem as Windows 7 shouldn't be doing this any differently to Windows XP - it's a characteristic of the filesystem, not the OS.
At the same time, I wouldn't expect the OS to routinely append the time & date to files as it would make them unusable to most applications.
Your sound card issue is going to be difficult to solve - the Windows XP sound card driver is expecting to own the sound card and have exclusive access to it but it can't do this as a hosted system running in a virtual machine because the hosting system will own it. What you would need is for the hosting system to present a virtual sound card interface to be used by a Windows XP virtual sound card driver. There may already be some sound card functionality, such as playing sounds, via such a virtual sound card interface but I believe that for this application you're using the sound card Analogue-to-Digital converter (ADC) hardware at a low level and that might be why the problem arises - the virtual sound card interface, if any, may not support the low-level ADC calls being made by the Windows XP application.
-
The effect of the date stamping is as follows, I have a receiver for weather satellite pictures that automatically switches on the Minidisk recorder and saves a copy of the pass as an audio file.
If I load this into the computer running XP I can change the time stamped on the file to the correct time of the pass so that when it is displayed with WxToImg or Satsignal a map is overlayed on the picture showing the boundaries of the countries (useful when cloud cover is extensive).
I cannot do this with Windows 7 when I change the time/date of the file this is ignored and the file retains the date/time when the file is loaded from the Minidisk.
I realise this is a bit of an un-problem as I could leave the computer running continuously and record the pictures a they come in but I would like to be able to play recorded pictures without having to revert to an obsolescent OS.
I realise that the the sound card problem is probably insoluble but this can be got over by transferring the files to a USB memory device with windows 7 and then accessing this same device with the virtual XP and modifying the date/time there in before displaying them.
-
Hmm... what you need to find out is what particular date & time is being set on the minidisk recorder, which date & time value is used by your WxToImg or Satsignal software and which date & time is being changed when you try to change it in W7 - that is, you need to find whether it's the creation date & time, the last modification date & time or the last accessed date & time (I'd guess it's the creation date & time).
The minidisk recorder is most likely setting the creation date & time, as I doubt it allows you to edit recorded data in place (so there's unlikely to be a modification date & time associated with the file while it's on the MD recorder).
When you copy the file to your W7 system though, it seems to be setting the creation date & time to the current time - that is, the date & time when the file was copied, instead of copying the file metadata along with the file data.
It's possible then, that WXP allows you to change the creation date & time associated with a file but that W7 does not, at least using the same method. I've no idea if there's a way to change the creation date & time on W7 but check exactly which date & time fields (metadata) you're changing when you try to change it on W7.
The funny thing is that I'm surprised that both WXP and W7 should use the current date & time for the creation date & time as these should really be preserved; although the file may be new to Windows, it's the data that's important and changing the date & time associated with that data, just because it's new to Windows is a Very Bad Thing.
Have you checked that you're moving the data across in the right way?
-
The minidisk recorder is simply an audio recorder similar to a tape recorder it does not put any additional data on the file.
I then input this via a sound card and create a file with either WxToImg or Audacity
I can then call this what I like, in XP when I label it In the format that WxToImg or Satsignal likes i.e MMDDHHMM (month,day,hour,minute) this is accepted as the time of the satellite pass and a map overlay is created but Win 7 insists on giving it the date and time when it was recorded by Audacity or WxtoImg and this is the date/time that the map generating part of the display program tries to use.
-
Although minidisk is used primarily for audio recording and playback it is still a digital medium and the data is held on the minidisk in digital format, so I would be very surprised if no metadata identifying the file is included in the file. The data on the minidisk won't simply consist of a stream of digitised data.
After reading your last post though, I'm not sure it's relevant now.
I thought that you were changing the file attributes to change the time associated with the file but it appears as though you're actually just renaming it, to incorporate the date & time in the file name. This is pretty common practice for date & time orientated data files.
W7 isn't going to be renaming your data files though, so it looks like your WxToImg or Satsignal software doesn't read the date & time from the file name but from the file attributes, which is a bit odd if it requires the date & time to be incorporated in the file name. Perhaps the software is just using the date & time incorporated in the file name for sequencing purposes i.e. just calling them 00000001, 00000002, 00000003... would work just as well as using real dates & times.
Either way, it looks as though you need to check out the file attributes to see what's going wrong.
-
I entered Windows 7 attributes into Google and it came up with plenty of interesting suggestion but as this is a whole new subject for me and as I have had a hard day plumbing I will not pursue the matter until after the Autumn holiday.
PS I have a tape recorder but it is not frequency stabilised so I don't know if it will be sufficiently stable for facsimile type use but I will try it.
-
You should lookup the TOUCH command in UNIX.
To be more specific because you all use windows/DOS look at this, for
Win OS's(its a clue{note: WSH superceded batch around Win95})
http://www.paulsadowski.com/WSH/timestamp.htm
-
I have used this free application in the past to recursively alter all the attributes of files in a folder, its for any windows OS as well.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/Attribute-Changer.shtml
It may be of help to you.
-
If your machine is over 600MHz CPU , Why don't you simply get a good version of Linux such as Slackware or SUse (even an old small kernel will do it Like Mandrake 7 (around 1998)).
Linux configures a boot-loader for before startup so you can go to either Win or Mac or Linux e.t.c.
The file system "any file is written to and stored on is irrelevant" only the number of bytes in the file and the correct OS is reading it(one that can properly!).
e.g.(Linux read/writes many FS reasonably safely, it simply is another OS so it does not boot their programs).
Now use the TOUCH command and change the time-stamp.
or even easier, make a copy by WSH script the moment after the SYSTEM TIME/DATE is reset n the last line, the change it back to the remembered time date instantly after the file write copy completes.
http://www.nicephotog-jsp.net/linux-install.html
And Of interest...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724290%28VS.85%29.aspx
-
Many thanks for all the interesting suggestions re time stamp, I have changed from Sun virtual XP32 to Windows 7 Virtual XP32 and now find it simple to keep this in a sleep state and wake it up to process the odd picture.
This Virtual XP is much better integrated with the host than the Sun version so I do not have to use a USB device but can access files in the host directly.
My chief reason for sticking With MS is because one of the main uses of my computer is to access my bank accounts via EGG which only works with IE8.