Calibre, Windows 10 and PRS650

[Vertigo]

I have recently been forced to upgrade to Windows 10 (grumble, mutter) and now it seems that calibre will no longer communicate with my Sony PRS 650 ereader (even more grumbles and mutters) and I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem and/or knows of a solution. Unfortunately it seems unlikely a solution is going to come from Calibre; a bit of googling turned up this comment from the Calibre developer Kovid Goyal: "Given that this device line is discontinued, I'm not particularly interested in spending time on it myself." It does seem to be some interface issue with Windows 10.

So it seems that once again (it has happened many times before) I'm to be penalised because I have looked after my piece of technology but must now consider replacing it simply because it is a bit older, even though it still works just fine. The only problem I've ever had with it is battery exhaustion but having figured out how to replace the battery it's now on its fourth battery and doing just fine thank you very much!

I can still work with it but only by doing all management on an older computer also running an older Calibre or putting the books on manually which is doable but a pain.

Anyone help gratefully received.

[This windows 10 'upgrade' has given me no end of hassles...]

 

[Vince W]

Windows 10 seems to have been designed with the intent on making older computers unstable and unusable forcing you into buying a new box.

 

[awesomesauce]

Check the Mobileread.com forums. If anybody has a fix for things Calibre related, it will be those guys.

Running an older version of Calibre isn't a problem if that's what works; that's what I do because an update changed how the library daemon worked and I couldn't serve multiple libraries at the same time. (I like to have separate libraries for comics, PDF, and ebooks because I use different apps/devices for reading them.)

 

[mosaix]

Commiserations, Vertigo. Very irritating.

Once I had a Blackberry. I also had a gmail account from which I downloaded emails. I made the fundamental mistake of changing my gmail password - there’s no facility to change a gmail password on the Blackberry. So back to gmail - not allowed to change password back to an old password. No plans to allow password change on Blackberry - can’t even delete and recreate account.

Result? iPhone and new email provider.

No wonder Blackberry went to the wall.

Poor customer service irritates the hell out of me.

 

[Vertigo]

Check the Mobileread.com forums. If anybody has a fix for things Calibre related, it will be those guys.

Running an older version of Calibre isn't a problem if that's what works; that's what I do because an update changed how the library daemon worked and I couldn't serve multiple libraries at the same time. (I like to have separate libraries for comics, PDF, and ebooks because I use different apps/devices for reading them.)

That's where I got most of the information I already have and where I got Kovid Goyal's response, which, to be fair, I can sympathise with.

Unfortunately an older Calibre doesn't solve the problem I tried installing an older version that I knew worked on Windows 7 but still it won't connect on Windows 10. It's some sort of windows 10 interfacing problem according to Kovid. So I'll do most of my normal management on my main computer and then switch the database external drive over to the older Windows 7 machine to manage the eReader; uploading books to it etc. A pain but not unworkable.

 

[awesomesauce]

A pain but not unworkable.

Yeah, pain. But if it's a Windows 10 interface issue, not much Kovid can do about that. If it makes you feel better, this is how I get Kindle books:

1. Buy the book on my laptop.
2. Get the ancient Eee notebook out of the closet.
3. Boot into Windows XP. The Eee must be plugged into a wall and a network cable because both the battery and wifi are shot but this is the only machine in the house that has Windows and can run the Kindle reader.
4. Download my new Kindle ebook.
5. Save the file to my USB stick.
6. Put the USB stick in my laptop.
7. SCP the file to the server where I run Calibre and import and convert it to epub.
8. Turn on wifi on my ereader, connect to the Calibre OPDS catalog, and get my book.

Someday my Eee is gonna die or the Kindle reader is gonna stop working, and that's gonna be it for me reading tiny press & self published books. I really wish people would sell books through channels besides Amazon!

 

[tinkerdan]

I'm assuming your device uses a USB connection to the PC.
If not then what I have below won't help.
If it is an interface issue with Win 10--have you looked in the device manager to see if the usb device for that is loading properly?

Perhaps if that's the issue you might consider loading the latest software for that device made for windows 10 and see if that fixes the driver for the USB.

It doesn't look like they list anything separate for that on the website. So one could hope that if it were a driver issue with the USB then they might have that in the software they claim works on windows 10.

If the USB is working then it might not be the fault of your device or Windows.

Do you have Calibre for Win 64 loaded or Win 32 (standard x86 version).
They claim both may reside on the computer so you might try one over the other to see if you get different results.

USB Drivers for some devices vary quite a bit from 64 to 32 Bit and if the Sony is using 32 bit drivers you may have to use the 32 bit program.
Just a thought.
Sometimes it makes no difference; however I still think that when you plug the device into the computer through USB that there should only be problems if the driver fails to load properly.

 

[Vertigo]

@awesomesauce : There is now a fix for Calibre to handle the silly KFX business so downloading to the latest version of Kindle for PC works again. So you can probably survive without the other machine so long as you can communicate with the device.

@tinkerdan : The USB is fine and I can upload the files manually using normal windows file copying, but it means I have to do management of stuff like the different collections manually which Calibre normally does for you. From what Kovid has said it is down to the older interface on my PRS 650 clashing in some way with the Windows 10 interface. He could most certainly fix it but it's just not worth his while to do the work for an older device like this. And I do understand that. Just a bit annoying.

 

[awesomesauce]

@awesomesauce : There is now a fix for Calibre to handle the silly KFX business so downloading to the latest version of Kindle for PC works again. So you can probably survive without the other machine so long as you can communicate with the device.

The problem isn't the KFX. It's that's the only machine in the house with any version of an OS that Amazon makes a Kindle app for. I guess there's a cloud reader? But I don't know if you can even download with that. (Given it's called "cloud reader" I guess not?) In a pinch I can get the KFX files off my phone, but if you've ever dug around in Android looking for where apps keep things, you understand why my sneakernet USB approach to file transfer is faster & easier.

The real solution is for people to publish books outside of Amazon's walled garden with open formats.

 

[Vertigo]

The problem isn't the KFX. It's that's the only machine in the house with any version of an OS that Amazon makes a Kindle app for. I guess there's a cloud reader? But I don't know if you can even download with that. (Given it's called "cloud reader" I guess not?) In a pinch I can get the KFX files off my phone, but if you've ever dug around in Android looking for where apps keep things, you understand why my sneakernet USB approach to file transfer is faster & easier.

The real solution is for people to publish books outside of Amazon's walled garden with open formats.

I'm a little confused there. I just download to my Kindle for PC which brings down the KFX folder with all the files in it. Then I load the main file inside that (.AZW but it's not the same as the old .AZW!!!!) and the plugins in Kindle now read that and do the conversion to epub.

That side of things works fine now.