Pssst, shhhhh,....

Don't tell Tony, but this coming Friday (20th) it will be exactly 3 years that our FAQ master has been a member of this community.

I think we (members of this board) should do something to commemorate this momentous event! Suggestions? Surprise party ?

BTW, as of this morning, his total post count was 14336, that makes a staggering average of 13.1 posts/replies a day, every single day!


With that, he's by far ahead of the next highest poster, Rob, @ 3817 (as in Empeg's Rob; who interestingly registered on Jan 1st, 2070; should have expressed thanks to him as well in another mail...; well, here and forthwith).

Cas.

Read the FAQ.

Read the FAQ

Read the

..

damn I'm never going to catch up!

ROFL

Well considering your "registered on" date says 12/31/1969, considerably earlier than the establishment of the BBS, you should have caught up by now!

Why not just have Tom change your post count in the database in exchange for a sneak preview of the trunk release?

Nah I can cope with being the longest standing board member.

Even with the right dates I must have been one of the first. I signed up within a day or two of Paul starting the BBS. I remember the days when Rob Schofield had Tony's role of most prolific poster!

Rob

Uhh ... ooops! (Who forgot to lock the door?!?)

Surprise!

Uh oh. That penguin is gonna go get wasted again like he did at PCA's tuner party.

Was I that bad? Oh dear....

Thanks, everyone.

I remember that time 3 years ago very clearly.

I was wishing someone had a really good way of playing MP3s in the car. I remember having hopes that the AutoPC (which had just come out) might let us do that. At the time, I didn't know that it had such low processor speed and wasn't optimized for MP3 playback. All I saw was "CD-ROM and CPU in the dash" and assumed it was just a question of software to make it happen.

Then I stumbled across the empeg.com page linked from another web site (don't remember which one) and instantly forgot everything I'd been reading about in-car MP3 playback up until that point. Now here was someone doing it right in every way.

Then, something bad happened, which was that I got my car broken into and my CD player stolen (for the second time). But out of the ashes of that pain came the knowledge that I now had an decent-sized check from the insurance company coming... One ebay transaction later, and the rest is history, eh?

Tony,

It may have only been around 2 years ago that I joined, but I was a lurker since before the first Mk. 1's were shipping. But my account is very similar to yours in that I was looking at various mp3 players out there when somehow I stumbled onto empeg.com. *Poof!* Everything else was history! I honestly have no idea what product or wanna-be-product I was reading about prior to that. I've tried quite a few times to remember what site linked me here but it escapes me. Like you said, everything else prior to that was worth forgetting.

Can anyone name any gadget or peice of technology they have that STILL gives them that feeling (or still continues to impress them so much) YEARS after buying it? That cell phone you bought in 2000 isn't so cool anymore is it? How about that Dolby Digital reciever that doesn't have component video switching, 6.1, etc.?

Congratulations Tony (and Rob) and thanks for all you've given to us!

I remember I was looking through the forums at PC Magazine's site. I think they had some sort of article on building a car PC yourself. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed at all. Most of the people on that forum, however, were saying things like "Man, this is a GREAT idea!! This is waaay better than that $50,000 empeg thing!"

I'm glad I went the right way.

I had actually built an in-car pc complete with 8.4" VGA touchscreen and had it installed and running in various incarnations. When the fire-sale hit, I bought an empeg, and soon after sold the in-car pc rig and never looked back. The only thing I miss is the GPS, which will be added back in soon hopefully.

I had spent a bit of time trying to persuade Kenwood and Sony that adding mp3 CD functionality to their CD players would be a good idea, but came up against a lot of fear (about lawyers mainly) and had finally decided I was going to have to build a car-going PC for the purpose of playing music when I followed an obscure link to empeg.com. I got onto the waiting list as soon as I could and after a slight delay (I took the option of waiting for the Mk II) have never wanted anything else in my car.

I have been demoing it to many folks, many of whom have expressed an urge to visit ebay as soon as possible.

The only downside - I really gotta buy some bigger disks

I still remember the time frame I was in when I stumbled upon empeg.com. I was in my latter college years, and as such - I had amassed a massive mp3 collection. But, I was also poor. All I know is that I wanted mp3s in my car, and at that point, I was burning mp3 mixes to CD on a slow old 4x writer, and even then, that was another cd I would have to carry around.

I began searching around, I think mostly looking at the hardware page on mp3.com. So many people had rigged up these hodge-podge systems out of cheap old pizza-box PCs mounted in the trunk, with some obscure and convoluded control panel in the console. I still remember when the z919 came out, but, like others, I looked away from all of this when I found the empeg site. This was even before the MkII came out. All I knew was that I needed about $1500 bucks. It would be the first thing I would buy when I graduated and got a job.

And it was, just shy of 2 years later - I was dropping 1300 clams for the 10gb model. It is still to this day (with the exception of cars) the single most expensive thing I have ever bought, and worth every penny

Hmm. When I first found out about the mp3mobile sometime in 1998, I don't think empeg.com even existed. I remember drooling over the pictures of the little character-based LCD screen and such... I could have never imagined it'd become what it has.

Yeah, the mp3mobile was what I first saw too. I think it might have been summer of 1997 (I was an intern (no jokes needed)). That was after I spent a semester trying to convince an EE friend of mine how easy it would be to convert a standard CD player into reading mp3 CDs.

Hm, the page says at the bottom it was created in April 1998.. Maybe you mean Summer '98? That's about when I remember it.

Maybe that is it then. Four years doesn't seem long enough ago, but time always seems longer when waiting for something as cool as the empeg was.

I remember a good friend calling me up from work, saying goto empeg.com! I loaded it up on my 28.8 dialup. And all i saw was "Does your car stereo run linux?" and i knew i needed one. Wasn’t until almost 2 years later i got my mk1 on eBay. I wish i could remember who sold it to me. #129, the best thing i have ever owned. Now to convert the sled mount on my mk1 to an mk2 style so i can have 2 cages

i remember the first time I saw my empeg.....It was in the dash of a brand new BMW. And as I busted the glass on that car with my trusty crowbar, I knew I had found a great unique new toy. I can't quite recall what other new toys I found that day or exactly where I was, but I remember holding that mkII in my hands with awe and wonder as I listened to the pleasant sound of a car alarm. And the rest was history. Ah, fond memories.

troll or not...that's pretty durn funny. ROFL

hey I'm just curious, when was that unit made? I think you can tell by looking at the 9 digit number on the little sticker on the bottom of the unit... if you post it I can help you figure out the date from that meaningless string of 9 digits... Mine was made in March 2001.

Hey so was mine! cool!

I was just kidding by the way in case anyone couldn't tell. I bought mine fair & square.

LOL. another rare gem

Back in 1998, I didn't know much about MP3; I was still hauling CDs all over the place. But, I heard about the mp3mobile and thought it seemed cool.

When the MK1 was for sale, I had just started as a professor, so I could consider buying something that would have otherwise cost me an entire month's stipend. But, I wimped out, particularly with the rumors of the MK2 being bigger, better, faster, stronger...

I was wait-listed on the MK2 for a while (I forget my queue number, but I seem to recall they went through the queue pretty quickly once they got rolling); it finally showed up a few months after I'd bought a new car. The time in between was maddening: my shiny new BMW had only a tape deck in it. I wasn't going to go buy an aftermarket CD player when I knew there was an empeg on the way. So, instead, I satisfied myself by slowly ripping my CD collection (using grip, and stupidly assuming that 112kbps CBR was "good enough" -- ha!).

Then, when it arrived and was finally installed, I remember being frustated and annoyed at the volume. Turns out, BMW's "standard" is something like 5.5V for max volume, where the empeg uses 4V. It wasn't until voladj came out that I was satisfied with the volume (and I'd still like it a bit louder sometimes, but not often enough that it's worth throwing money at the problem). Still, just imagine it: being able to fix an annoying hardware problem (volume levels) in software!

And, then there was the tuner. I installed it early September '01 and I was still dorking with it when I was driving to work on the morning of September 11 and listening to the news...

And, then there was the firesale. I tried to convince everybody I knew to buy an empeg. One friend listened, and he's very happy. Everybody else didn't get it, even when it was so cheap that you could hardly ignore it. Sigh.

I was a PC in the boot MP3 player person (hence my website link) before I heard about the firesale. I was in the middle of building a new one with a colour touchscreen TFT, I flogged it all and bought two empegs with the money. Best fscking £600 I ever spent!

D33zy, you are seriously disturbed.

Ok ok, that was funny, but still man, seek help.

D33zy, you are seriously disturbed.

I admit it was amusing too, albeit deranged... I just had to reply with some bit of sarcasm too! I was hoping for that 9 digit number, though.

I do get the feeling that he's smarter than you think.