Pioneer Bar 'n' Coder

[CelGen]

I was googling about trying to find more details on the Pioneer LaserBarcode format and it seems at one point Pioneer released a program on an 800k floppy that let you generate compatible barcodes. Anyone seen a copy before in the wild that wasn't sitting on ebay? What was it like?

 

[olePigeon]

Believe it or not, I found a boxed copy at work.  The problem is that I can't remember if I took it home or threw it away.  I'll need to rummage through my stuff.

I THINK I took it home and imaged it.  I wanted to use it with my growing Laserdisc collection.

 

[Scott Baret]

I have seen this, and I'm 99% positive it was a HyperCard stack, at least in an earlier version.

 

[olePigeon]

Found it!  Was in my box of miscellaneous software.  I never thought anyone else would ask about it, it's so obscure.

Pretty extensive manual, too.  I don't think I have time to scan the whole thing.  Maybe there's a PDF online somewhere.

 

[CelGen]

I'll see if I can shuffle a copy over to one of my macs tonight and see if it behaves.

 

[CelGen]

Yep. It's a Hypercard stack. The diskette contains versions for Laserdiscs and CD's. Both applications also open and immediately ask if you have a player attached. If you say yes the stack hangs the machine trying to find it and does not seem to time out after a period.

It comes with an Avery label template so that generated barcodes can then presumably be printed to stickers if you don't just want sheets of barcodes.

It's also really buggy for me at least on system 8.1 and 512mb ram. Quitting gives an error about thing being associated with that command and generating barcodes gives an Out of Memory error.

 

[olePigeon]

If your LaserDisc player has a serial port, you can connect it to your Macintosh and control it from there.

 

[CelGen]

more than likely but man in that regard there's nothing to help you configure the stack for the player. You seemingly cannot even set the baud rate.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

You may want to do some searching/posting over at the LaserDiscDataBase forums at lddb.com . I want to say I've seen some stuff over there on this. 

 

[olePigeon]

According to the manual:

Make sure that you have a CC-04 cable connecting your player to the modem port on your Mac.  If the CC-04 cable is connected to the printer port, the program will prompt you and set communication via the printer port.  If you are using the Macintosh PowerBook Model #170 and you are connected to the modem port of that computer, you must set the modem switch in the Control Panel to the "external" setting.

The Bar'n'Coder program is smart enough to determine the baud rate setting on your player and will adjust the software accordingly.  However, please make sure your player is set to the following parameters:

Data Length = 8 bit

Stop Bit = 1 bit

Parity = No

These parameters can only be set on the LD-V8000 and LD-V4200 player.  Refer to your player's Operating Instructions manual to review the procedure for setting communication parameters on your player.

These parameters are automatically set on the LD-V4400, CLD-V2600, CLD-V2400, and LD-V2200 players.

 

[Themk]

https://cybarcode.com/pioneer/software/lbc-nc3_bar-n-coder

It looks like someone still has a new copy of this software banging around, for the grand price of $95.

I thought that was funny