Getting Your Diamond Rio to Work in Linux
salmon@bluemarble.net
I bought a Diamond
Rio about a year ago during a rebate promotion. For those of you who
don't know, you can take mp3's that you have stored on your hard drive and
upload them onto this nifty little device, which is about half the size of
a walkman or smaller. Of course, the software that comes with it to
moderate this process doesn't run on Linux.
That brings us to the point of this NHF. Believe it or not, getting the
Rio to work in Linux is easier then the same process in Windows. I'm
serious. If you don't believe me then just follow along. Before I start
with though, let me relay some information. According to the software's
homepage, you need to be root to compile and run this thing. My own
experience tells me that if you compile it as root, then you can run it as
a normal user. Also, you might think that you'll need to do something with
your kernel. This is not the case. Finally, when I refer to "rio," then
I'm refering to the software. When I refer to "Rio," then I'm talking
about actual device.
Now then, let's get started. Of course, the first thing you'll need is the
software. Click here
to download it. You can also check out the homepage at http://www.world.co.uk/sba/rio.htm.
Now that you have the source, you'll need to unpack and compile it.
tar -xvf rio007.tar
cd rio107
su (and enter the root password when prompted)
make
That should create a file named "rio" that we want to copy to a more
suitable directory. I recommend putting it in /usr/local/bin/, but really
anywhere in your path is fine.
cp rio /usr/local/bin/
exit (to exit suid)
That entire process, including the download, will take you less than five
minutes. Once you're done, the software should be installed. After you've
finished, make sure that your Rio is connected to your Linux box, because
now we're going to get the two to talk to each other. . .
My guess is that you already have some music in your Rio. To list those
songs, issue this command (if your Rio is empty, then you will just get
some information about its memory):
rio -d
Note: You might have to specify a port address. If rio doesn't recognize
your device, run it with the -p option followed by one of the following
addresses: 0x378, 0x3BC, or 0x278 (eg. rio -p 03xBC
-d). One of those should work.
If you would like to delete one of the files on your Rio, issue:
rio -z track_name.mp3
Where track_name.mp3 is the name (not the number)
of the track you want to delete.
If you would like to delete all of the files on your Rio, issue:
rio -za
Of course, the whole thing is worthless if you can't acutally put any
songs on it. To do that, issue
rio -v -u file_name_1.mp3 file_name_2.mp3
Where file_name_1.mp3 and file_name_2.mp3 are the files that you want to put on
the Rio.
There are a myriad of other options for running rio, and you can check
them out for yourself by running it without any command line switches. If
your vertical screen space is limited, then you might want to pipe the
command through more.
rio | more
So there you have it. Now that you can operate your Rio using Linux,
that's one less poor excuse to use Windows. If you would like to find out
more information about finding, playing, and sharing mp3's, then I
recommend you check out the NHF on mp3's here.
-B
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