AniDB O'Matic - Documentation: FAQ

Note	This FAQ is for a forthcoming version of AoM and not AoM 0.5.

Questions

What kind of hardware does AoM need?

A Pentium 2 or later should work fine along with a minimum of 128 MB of RAM. However please note that the initial dump parsing would be horrendously slow on this kind of hardware. A more reasonable setup is a semi recent 1.5GHz or faster CPU along with enough RAM to not make your computer constantly write to the HDD. ;)

(Which is size of OS in RAM + 100MB for AoM.)

When I first start AoM there's no data, my MyList is empty and no anime are shown.

AoM does not contain any data about AniDB when you first start it. It must connect to AniDB and download this information. This download is quite large and grows ever larger as AniDB grows. There will first be one large file then possibly several small ones. All must be downloaded and parsed before AoM is up to date.

You can see the current status of AoM in the Log frame.

My computer is dying! What are you doing to it after the big download?

The dump parsing can be quite heavy. AoM needs to decrypt then unpack the dump, parse it and insert the data into an encrypted database. The current progress and speed of this can be seen in the status bar and in the Log frame. While AoM does this at a low thread priority many systems can't handle the load on the HDD the database creation generates and the system will seem unresponsive.

Also, as the dump parsing is actually quite stressful, if your computer go all bonkers it might indicate faulty hardware too. (Has happened several times...)

When I hash files my computer experiences slowdowns, how can I fix this?

This is almost always HDD related, not CPU related, just like when parsing dump files. AoM runs it's hashing in low priority threads and most windows tasks will take precedence. However, this is not true for HDD access (pre-vista or with crap drivers).

If you're experiencing slowdowns please first don't hash stuff on your windows drive, swap disk, games drive or whichever other important drive that is being slow today. Second, if you have a single core / celeron / duron CPU, please realize it's slow and don't expect it to be all super duper super computer, anything which runs heavy stuff will probably tax it anyway.

With semi-decent hardware it's quite possible to hash stuff while playing games without noticing anything, assuming you have enough RAM for the game that is. ;)

I feel AoM uses too much RAM/CPU/HDD. Please fix this? I know what I'm talking about.

I would like to encourage you to write your own AniDB TCP Client. Please take up this challenge, tell me how trivial and quick it'll be then disappear without a word after 1-6 months when you realize it's not trivial just like everyone else.

If system resources are a problem for you please either:

Use an UDP Client if all you want to do is add files to your MyList. There's a huge amount of UDP Clients for AniDB.
Use a web browser if you feel it's memory footprint of 60MB or so is more reasonable.
Visit #anidb on IRC and get to know Chii, our very own MyList tampering bot! (No pantsu shopping though, sorry.)
Use lynx to browse AniDB instead.

Can you prevent AoM from connecting to AniDB automatically?

Yes, AoM has an offline mode, however it has several limits. To use it either start aom with the /offline switch or enable the "Offline mode" under the tools menu.

Note that AoM can't make changes to it's own MyList data nor perform many other similar tasks without sending a request to AniDB. Thus all changes will be queued instead and sent once the offline mode is turned off again. If the client is closed all queued changes will be lost.

Does AoM run on Linux? / Will there be a Linux version?

AoM does not and will not for the foreseeable future run on Linux without help in the form of Wine or similar. Please realize that AoM is written in Delphi (since I love it) which does currently not support Linux (since no one bought Kylix), maybe I'll one day rewrite AoM in another language but currently I see this as extremely unlikely unless the TCP API can be used without encryptions so I can clobber something together in mono / whatever and not care about performance / encryption / etc.

Does AoM benefit from multiple cores / CPUs?

Yes, many of the heaviest tasks in AoM support multi-threading, essentially everything which takes any performance except straight GUI updates (and some of those too) run in it's own thread or use a multi-threaded processing queue.

Plus, a dual core CPU means windows will be far more responsive than when using a single core CPU so just get with the times already. ;)

I have a question not answered in the FAQ, where can I get help?

There are multiple places where you can get help:

AniDB O'Matic Forum (answers usually given within a day or two)
The AoM IRC channel: irc://irc.synirc.net/aom (answers given if anyone is awake / present)
Rar: The AniDB mod Rar has on multiple occasions exclaimed his delight about AoM having zero documentation whatsoever so I'm certain he's willing to help any lost souls! :P

Please be as detailed as possible when you ask for help and remember this isn't a 24 hour hotline, we'll help as soon as we're free / awake / have time. :) You don't pay for this, hence you get whatever service we're willing to provide for free. Remember, being a nice pleasant person usually gets you help faster.