- Download and unzip the new Audio folder from the link in the email I sent you.
- Put the SD card from your JLT handheld into a card reader attached to your computer (the folder is too large to transfer by ActiveSync or direct USB connection).
- Delete the old Audio folder from the card; copy the new one to it.
- Safely remove the card from the reader (Windows: right click on the removable drive letter representing the card in Computer or My Computer, then choose Eject from the pop-up menu, wait a few seconds and remove the card; Mac: drag the desktop folder representing the card to the trash, wait a few seconds, remove the card; Linux or other: consult the OS documentation). If you just pull the card out of the reader or disconnect the reader from the computer without following the safe removal procedure, you may permanently destroy the card (problems often don't show up right away, but get worse as time goes on).
- Put the card back in the JLT handheld.
- Use File Explorer to navigate to the Backup Files folder on the SD card. In all but the oldest JLT systems, you'll find a file called "tcpmp.pocketpc.0.72RC1.cab" there (if you don't have it, download it from here and put it on your SD card). Tap it to install the TCPMP Media Player (in WM6 systems, when it asks where you want to install the file to, choose "Device").
- Now go to the Program menu and tap TCPMP to start the program.
- In Options/Settings, choose the File Associations page, tap MPEG Audio Files to put a check in the box next to it. This sets TCPMP as the default player for mp3 files and is necessary to make the pronunciatons in the Edict dictionary play in TCPMP rather than in Windows Media Player.
- In Options/Settings, choose the Player page, and make sure "Play at Open" is checked.
- To use TCPMP with an English interface, it's necessary to set the device's Regional Setting to Japanese, if it isn't set that way already.* The Regional Setting is a global setting for your Windows Mobile device; generally it sets how things like numbers and dates are displayed. Usually, it's only Japanese stuff that cares about the Regional Setting--it makes no difference for most English software, so there's usually no downside to setting it to Japanese (indeed, it may make dealing with future Japanese software easier). To do this, tap Settings from the Start Menu, then tap the System tab at the bottom, then tap the Regional Settings (globe) icon. Change the setting to Japanese. Then, you'll have to do a soft reset to restart the entire system and make the change take effect. Simply tap the reset button, which is recessed into a hole on the back of the Axim and on the bottom of the iPAQ. It'll take about 30 seconds to restart, then you're all set.
- You're done with the upgrade, but now it'd be a good idea to make a system backup to protect the changes you've just made in case of a crash or hard reset. Axim customers can use the Data Backup program, and iPAQ customers can use iPAQ Backup.
*(Step 10) However, some people may prefer to keep the device set to the English Regional Setting, or, rarely, you might have installed some other software that requires the English Regional Setting (I've never found such a program, but I can't be sure there isn't one). In that case, you've got two choices:
- Keep TCPMP set to English. Japanese in the playlists will display normally, but in the Player Window, where it shows you the kanji or kana for the word when a Japanese-first audio flashcard is playing, the Japanese text will show up as gibberish. However, many users ignore the display entirely when studying with the audio flashcards--if this is how you study, the gibberish won't matter to you.
- Change the TCPMP interface to Japanese. Japanese in both the playlist and the Player Window will display normally. Using TCPMP in Japanese isn't too bad. If you want to do anything beyond the basics in TCPMP, you can consult the user guide on this site, which translates all the Japanese, or you can simply set it to English, find or do what you want, then set it back to Japanese. To change the TCPMP interface language, in the TCPMP program, in the Options Menu, tap Settings, then on the General Page (the first page you see when you open the settings) change the language. Then click OK in the lower left and OK to the message that pops up. The program has to shut down and restart for the change to take effect, so tap Exit in the File Menu, then tap TCPMP in the Start Menu to restart the program.
How to Use the Edict Audio Companion
Very little has changed. You still just tap the green link in the entry for a Japanese word and the pronunciation will begin playing automatically (now in a TCPMP window instead of a Windows Media Player window). To go back to the dictionary, tap the "X" at the top right of the TCPMP window to make it go away. If you then see an Internet Explorer or File Exploere window, tap the "X" to make that go away, too (different systems work slightly differently here, but as you can see it makes little difference in use). For more info on using TCPMP (most usefully, how to enable setting the volume louder than the default maximum), see the TCPMP guide.
How to Use the Audio Flashcards
In the File (ファイル) Menu, tap Playlist (プレーリスト), then from the File (ファイル) Menu in the next window, tap Load Playlist (プレーリストを読込). Then navigate to SD Card/ Audio, scroll down to the playlists, and tap one to choose it, then tap OK to load it. You can see screenshots of these in the JLT TCPMP guide.
The first time you use it, when the playlist appears, Japanese in the playlist may show up as gibberish. That's OK. After you've used it for a few minutes, it'll straighten itself out. If Japanese in the Player Window of TCPMP shows up as gibberish, see the last part of the "How to upgrade" section, above.
Now, choose the playlist you want to study. Remember, JLPT level 1 is the MOST difficult, not the easiest, so if you're a beginner, start with the JLPT 4 playlists.
More information on using TCPMP is here.
Important advice: The JLT system won't go to sleep ("turn off," as you probably think of it) while an audio or video file is playing, neither when you hit the power button nor automatically after a few minutes of inactivity. Instead, it'll keep playing and using battery power. So you should stop or pause any media that's playing when you're done or when you want to put the system to sleep ("turn it off"). Fortunately, if you forget, in most situations you'll hear it playing after you think you've put it to sleep and realize it's still going. This isn't a factor with the pronunciations from the Edict dictionary, as TCPMP automatically stops after playing each of those.
Finally, I recommend never using WMP again--it'll always want to add all the files to its library, which, again, will paralyze your handheld for many hours and cripple WMP (if you ever DO do that accidentally, just hit the reset button to shut down WMP and soft reset).
Using the System for Other Media
You can use TCPMP for most any media format, but the interface is less than ideal (plus, of course, there's the need to keep the interface in Japanese for using the Flashcards). Besides all the tiny menus and submenus, it doesn't have the feature of automatically generating usable playlists from folders which so many other programs have. For example, if you copy a folder full of mp3 songs to your memory card--with subfolders for artists, and within each artist folder, subfolders for each album, a common way of storing music--most other programs make it easy search for music by artist and album. So you may want to try a different program for using your JLT dictionary as a media player. There are many free and commercial options, and tastes differ wildly. I think Nitrogen Player is a good one--it's got a good interface that makes finding and playing your music pretty easy, and it's finger-friendly: you don't have to pull out the stylus to change songs and settings. Whichever program you choose, I have two bits of advice:
- If you have the new program set as the default program to play mp3 files (usually found in the settings or options under "file associations" or "application associations"), then it'll be the program that pops up to play pronunciations when you tap a link in the Edict dictionary. With some programs it doesn't work smoothly; if for this or another reason (like the special extra loud volume boost you can get in TCPMP) you want to go back to using TCPMP for the dictionary pronuciations, set the new program NOT to be the default player for mp3 files, and then go into TCPMP and set it to be the default again.
- If the program has the feature of automatically scanning the memory card for media files and adding them to its media library, be sure to disable that feature in the program's settings or set it to skip the Audio folder on the SD card when it does so. Most programs with the library feature allow you to do one or both of these (the fact that the built-in Windows Media Player doesn't is why I recommend against using it if you have the Edict Audio Companion option). The best bet is a program like Nitrogen that doesn't import media files into a media library.
Troubleshooting
Even with the system Regional Setting set to Japanese or with TCPMP set to Japanese, Japanese in the playlist and/or Player Windows shows up as gibberish.
- If you set the system Regional Setting to Japanese, did you remember to soft reset after changing the setting?
- If you set TCPMP to Japanese, did you shut down and restart TCPMP after changing the language? Did you shut down by tapping "Exit" in the File Menu? Just tapping the "X" at the top right of the TCPMP window only minimizes the program to the background--it doesn't shut it down.
- If you did both of the above correctly, then you may need to do a small repair to the program itself. Using File Explorer on your device, copy the file "common.dll" from the "common" folder inside the Audio folder to the TCPMP folder inside Program Files on My Device (choose "Yes" when it asks if you want to replace the existing file with the same name). This shouldn't be an issue for JLT Complete System customers, but if you put a system together yourself, this might be necessary.