Having had my empeg up and running for only a few hours now, I haven't had much opportunity to run emplode, but the few times I have run it have not gone entirely well.

Of the four times I have tried to synchronise with emplode, twice emplode locked up part way through to where I had to ctrl-alt-del to exit the program. After that, emplode would not re-load until I re-booted my computer.

This sounds more like a Windows instability problem than an emplode problem, as I have not heard of other people having this problem. Each time (after rebooting) emplode loaded and ran normally. Both synchronizations were relatively small -- one of them 51 MB, the other one 32 MB.

When emplode locked up, I gave it about 10 minutes to make sure it was really locked (no error messages were displayed), and after ctrl-alt-del the Windows dialog box said the program was not responding.

Does this seem to be a problem with emplode or more likely a problem with my system?

tanstaafl.
(cc: bugs@empeg.com)

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Of the four times I have tried to synchronise with emplode, twice emplode locked up

Hi Doug, welcome on-board.
Emplode used to be unreliable, but that's a long time ago. These days it works mostly as it should, but it seems that some handshake issues have crept in again lately that cause the sync process to fail, but only after it has done all it needed to do. In all of these cases, emplode simply failed with error screens etc. I can't remember it locking up

What method do you use (USB/Serial/Ethernet)?
W98 I assume?
Any power-off settings / back ground tasks that get into the way, may be?

Henno
mk2 6 nr 6

Keep in mind that when windows reports that a "program is not responding", that just means the program is not responding to any requests. Although that often means the program is frozen, that is not exclusively the case (especially with apps that are not multi-threaded).

It is possible for the program to not respond, but still be performing tasks.

A good example of this is the software I am developing at the moment. It has a data import function that takes a LONG time, and windows reports that it is not responding (but it happily imports the data after 10 minutes or so).

You may just need to give emplode a lot more time.

Kureg

I've had the same. Under NT, I remember I worked out there was a DLL that wasn't unloaded after a crash, which stopped emplode loading afterwards. I killed the DLL and it would reload.

I don't think you can sort this under Win 9x; I have encountered this on my new W98 machine a couple of times in the last week.

I need to narrow it down a bit further before reporting it as a bug, though.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Keep in mind that when windows reports that a "program is not responding", that just means the program is not responding to any requests. (...) You may just need to give emplode a lot more time.

Right, except that Doug said he gave it ten minutes. That's long enough in my book.

___________
Tony Fabris

Unless it is doing a fsck, in which case 10 minutes sometimes isn't enough. Doug didn't say what point the sync had got to.

__
Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

What method do you use (USB/Serial/Ethernet)?

I am using USB. The software installed flawlessly, the computer found and recognized the empeg on the very first try, everything set up perfectly.


Doug didn't say what point the sync had got to.

The synch usually fails somewhere in the last half of the loading process (Is that download or upload? I'm talking about the songs going into the empeg.) The first part, where my home computer queries the empeg and pulls the database out and displays my playlists always works. The adding of the new songs to the empeg is where it fails. Usually it gets more than half of them, then everything just stops. If I wait long enough, the empeg gives up on the little circle-whirley-arrows logo (Don't you just love it when I talk technical like that?) and says something like End of Playlist. a quick check of the playlists on the empeg shows that indeed, the song where it locked up, and all subsequent songs, are not there.

Last night I did another synchronize, and same thing happened: locked up most of the way through. Killed emplode, checked that it wouldn't restart, rebooted, and had no difficulty adding the last few songs with a second synch. I have not had any data corruption problems so far.

Computer is pretty much new (major upgrade couple of months ago: new motherboard, new hard drive, new RAM, new video card, new sound card, new CD-ROM, new operating system (Win 98) and the operating system should be pretty clean, as no software has been added and subsequently deleted.

So far I think I am running at exactly a 50% success rate on my emplode synchs -- every odd numbered synch has failed, every even numbered synch has succeeded, counting my first ever synch as #1. Maybe I should try every synch off of a fresh reboot, as every synch that succeeded so far was just after rebooting. There may be something "left over" from AudioCatalyst that is compromising emplode, as I always do a synch immediately after doing the rip & encode with A/C.

As I am determined to take this process of loading up my empeg very slowly, being sure every byte of music I put in is absolutely perfect, my synchs are all very small (I am trying to add one CD per night as a maximum) so these synch failures are only small inconveniences -- nothing I am upset about.

I'll keep fiddling and changing the variables and see if I can narrow it down. At this point I think it is more likely a flaw in my computer than a flaw in emplode or empeg.

tanstaafl.





"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

There may be something "left over" from AudioCatalyst that is compromising emplode, as I always do a synch immediately after doing the rip & encode with A/C.

It shouldn't be that, since many people (including myself) have done it this way without incident.

I'll keep fiddling and changing the variables and see if I can narrow it down. At this point I think it is more likely a flaw in my computer than a flaw in emplode or empeg.

Let's find out. Turn on the logging feature in Emplode and let's see what the log says when Emplode locks up.

___________
Tony Fabris

Hi,

This is *exactly* what I've been seeing as well. I posted this under bugs as 'Emplode crashes usb stack' to which there have been no posts.

I've just done some more syncs and this is still happening.

My PC is a brand (2 weeks) new Dell PIII 800 with Win98SE.

Paul.

Paul Haigh, 6GB, Blue
Reg: 4120 - Serial 00254

tanstaaf, you said:
Computer is pretty much new (major upgrade couple of months ago: new motherboard . . .etc.

is it, may be, also one of the newer speedy PCs like Paul's:?
My PC is a brand (2 weeks) new Dell PIII 800 with Win98SE.


Henno
mk2 6 nr 6

Henno, are you trying to infer that the newest, fastest PCs may have a problem? Or more accurately, that Emplode has trouble on the fastest PCs?

___________
Tony Fabris

are you trying to infer that the newest, fastest PCs may have a problem? Or (..) that Emplode has trouble on the fastest PCs?

I've no reason to doubt the newest / fast PCs, or any hint for a fault in emplode that would cause it to crash during a sync (would have posted).
I just find it curious that people suddenly report problems with USB and both Doug and Paul said that they have new PCs. Am just wondering as I find USB *very* reliable (Dell too, but at only 333 and 100MHz bus)

Henno
mk2 6 nr 6

As it happens, almost all of our developers use Dell PCs purchased within the last few months (last week or so in one case).

Rob

PS That's not an official endorsement for Dell of course, although they have announced one or two really cool products recently

Got it!

WIn 98, if a synch fails, then emplode closes the database window after you whack the error message. If you then try to reconnect, it fails and the connection window stays closed. If you exit from emplode, then re-start, it will not run beyond the splash screen.

Kill the process, then re-boot, then re-connect, it will work first time.
Done this twice now on 1.0.

Implication; something doesn't get cleaned up after a synch failure, and something gets left in memory (DLL?) which is not unlinked until a reboot.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

To continue the thread... my computer is not a super-fast machine. It is the last of the socket sevens, a 550 MHz AMD K6-2, 128 MB RAM, 64 MB video card.

To date, I have not had a single successful emplode synchronize. The last one I did was larger than the others - 3 CDs worth instead of the usual one, and I had to re-boot three times to get the 44 tracks loaded.

I'm still using release version 1.0, am waiting for the null modem cable to upgrade to the 1.01. Next time I synch I'll try and figure out how to turn on the logging function and see if it delivers any useful information.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I'm having the exact same problem as you guys. MK1, Latest version of Emplode and the developer's image. Running Win98SE on a pretty fast machine, Pentium III (500-600 MHz? can't remember) >= 128M ram? High speed RAID controller. USB is direct to motherboard (not through a hub).

I am syncronizing while plugged into the car sled (don't ask - hardware hacking). I guess first I'll try taking it out of the sled, if that doesn't fix it I'll try connecting to my laptop (much slower) to see if that fixes it. If I get any successful results, I'll let people know.

A little more information to add to the stew.

I have determined that my problem is temperature related. If my computer (the home PC, not the empeg) is warm, having been run for a few hours, the emplode program will fail every time. If I shut it off and let it cool down for an hour, emplode will load at least seven hours of music (that's the largest load I have tried). My best guess is that the USB is failing, causing the empeg to time out.

So, obviously a defective motherboard, right? Guess again. Replaced the motherboard (exact same model) and the behavior did not change.

I then brought the empeg and the software to work, where I have had 100% success running emplode.

This would seem to eliminate the empeg, the USB cable, the ac power brick and cable, and the emplode program as suspects.

So, I ask the question: Is anybody able to run emplode on an AMD K6-2 500Mhz computer with an Asus motherboard? Is it possible this could be some obscure socket-7 related problem, or more likely the ASUS implementation of USB just isn't sufficiently robust.

In a day or two I have made arrangements to borrow a USB hub, on the theory (hope?) that the hub will provide some buffering and keep the USB from falling over.

The guys@empeg have been helping me with this, and have offered me a modified emplode with additional error logging to see if we can track this down. I'll keep you informed.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Well, I tried taking it out of the sled, same thing. I tried re-downloading Emplode and installing it on my laptop, same thing. Laptop is a Sony Vaio 505VE. Slow, Pentium MMX 233 if I remember correctly.

Symptom (as discussed before) is: It loads about 10-20 songs (I'm using different songs each time I test it) then I look over at it and see that the Empeg has reset back to the "End of Playlist" display and Emplode thinks it's still going. Every five minutes or so it gives up trying to send a song and moves on to the next one. During this time it won't respond to mouse clicks and it only re-paints its window when it's giving up and going to the next song. The only ways to stop it are CTRL-ALT-DEL or unplug the USB cable. Either way Emplode won't recognize the Empeg again until you reboot.

I'm quickly running out of ideas.

Every five minutes or so it gives up trying to send a song and moves on to the next one.

I don't think mine is doing that... but maybe I haven't had the patience to wait, or maybe not the attention span to notice that it has changed to the next song. It seems like it just quits working -- the progress bar stops, and I don't notice any change in the name of the song that it (tries to) load. But, maybe I'm just not looking closely enough.

All the rest matches my symptoms exactly, right down to having to reboot to get emplode running again.

Sometime over the weekend I'll have that borrowed USB hub and I'll see if that changes anything.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I had an issue where a X-10 RF mouse on COM2 would show up with a yellow ! along with empeg's USB entry (also a yellow !) after a large # of songs uploaded. The player read 'end of playlist' and the emplode thought it was still going. By disabling the X-10 on COM2 I made this problem go away. Somehow USB/emplode wasn't playing nice with the other IRQ's & knocked them both down. I have all IRQ's used & some shared. Emplode runs fine since I started disabling com2 1st. FWIW YMMV

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

Two things:

1) I thought USB didn't use any IRQs. I can understand how disabling COM2 would take care of an IRQ or address conflict, but it surprises me that the USB stuff would be conflicting with anything COM2 was using. But stranger things have happened at sea.

2) When speaking to someone from Microsoft, I learned the official name for those conflict icons that appear in device manager. They are called "little yellow boo-boo icons."

___________
Tony Fabris

Well, I just had emplode lock up on me on my work computer. Same symptoms as home, except that emplode would reload afterwards (but it wouldn't work). I still had to reboot the computer.

After rebooting, had no difficulty loading a complete 10-CD boxed set of Mozart classical music.

I'm confused....

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Silly question... Has anyone with a Mark 1 been having Emplode problems similar to what's been reported by a few Mark 2 users lately?

I certainly haven't, and I've uploaded several albums since these problems were reported. I had one very brief problem where Emplode wouldn't start properly, but that was after a long session at my computer without a reboot, and other apps may have been putting bad voodoo into memory, so I can't count that. Otherwise, Emplode has been fast, stable, and useful this whole time.

___________
Tony Fabris

Tony, are you running windows 2000?
-mark

...proud to have owned one of the first Mark I units

Tony, are you running windows 2000?

Nope. Win98 original retail release at home (USB) and NT4 sp6 at work (serial). I hope to switch to Win2k here at work pretty soon so I can get USB going.

___________
Tony Fabris

Has anyone with a Mark 1 been having Emplode problems similar to what's been reported by a few Mark 2 users lately?


Yes, I'm using a Mark I unit.


I've tried many things and I haven't been able to figure out what's going on. I've been loading no more than 5 albums at a time (~350MB) and that seems to be working. (though it's a real pain) When I try to do more than that I usually run into trouble. I've even gotten the "The synchronisation process failed during stage 10:
Error 0xffffff92" and "The synchronisation process failed during stage 5:
Error 0xffffff92" error messages, but usually there is no error, Empeg just drops back to "End of playlist" and Emplode keeps going. Someone mentioned problems with COM2, but I don't have any "little yellow boo boo's" in the device manager.


I noticed that Michael is also using the developer's image could that be the common thread? Anybody not using the developer's image?


Michael also said he had two drives, I also have two drives (10GB+20GB). One of them I added myself. I'm quite skilled with hardware, so I wouldn't have damaged anything, but I guess I could have done something wrong on the software side of it. Could this be the common thread? Anyone having the problem with only one drive?

I noticed that Michael is also using the developer's image could that be the common thread? Anybody not using the developer's image?

I've been using the consumer image, and haven't had trouble. Of course, I also haven't been uploading any more than 3 albums at a time.

Michael also said he had two drives, I also have two drives (10GB+20GB). One of them I added myself. Could this be the common thread? Anyone having the problem with only one drive?

I'm using two drives, one of which I installed myself. Haven't had synch trouble.

___________
Tony Fabris

Okay, I'm not sure if this is what it does every time (though I assume it does), this is the first time I was actually staring at it when it lost synchronization. It was moving along just fine, then suddenly the Empeg jumped to the "Building music databases..." screen, sat there for a while, then went through messages like "Loading visuals" and then to the "End of playlist" screen. At that point Emplode was not repainting its window as any well behaved Windows program should.

It almost seems like the problem is that the Empeg reboots half way through the synchronization. Though perhaps not a full re-boot, since I never saw the Empeg and penguin splash screen.

Maybe this behavior will be more meaningful to someone who's more familiar with the source code.


Oh, (re: a previous post) loading smaller amounts of data (such as only copying five albums or less) doesn't fix the problem, it only reduces the probability that it will happen.

Okay, I'm not sure if this is what it does every time (though I assume it does), this is the first time I was actually staring at it when it lost synchronization. It was moving along just fine, then suddenly the Empeg jumped to the "Building music databases..." screen, sat there for a while, then went through messages like "Loading visuals" and then to the "End of playlist" screen. At that point Emplode was not repainting its window as any well behaved Windows program should.

Exactly.

Except that I have a Mark II. I am running consumer 1.0. I have a single hard drive. And I definitely see an inverse correlation between how many megabytes emplode will send to the empeg and how many minutes my computer (the PC, not the empeg) has been running,

I am starting to believe that there may be a hardware conflict between emplode and certain flavors of PC.

For what its worth, I am running:

500 MHz AMD K6-2
Asus P5A Super7 Motherboard with 2 USB ports
128 MB RAM
15 GB Hard Drive
Matrox AGP video card w/64 MB
Sound Blaster Live sound card
Microsoft optical mouse, USB & PS2 capable, connected to PS2 port

Any commonalities with anybody else?

tanstaafl.


tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

And I definitely see an inverse correlation between how many megabytes emplode will send to the empeg and how many minutes my computer (the PC, not the empeg) has been running.

You've suggested in the past that this correlation indicated a temperature problem. I just wanted to make sure you understood that it could still be a software problem. Some software programs can eat memory or resources when left running, and a PC that is perfectly stable when booted can slowly become increasingly unstable as some piece of software slowly eats up a resource. This doesn't have to be a foreground application: It can be a tray icon or even something that runs invisibly in the background.

Just out of curiosity, what tray apps are you running? You wouldn't happen to be running VShield or a similar product would you? I've seen those kinds of apps interfere quite seriously with other things before. (Personally, I manually scan every strange file/disk instead of relying on something like VShield.)

___________
Tony Fabris

I just wanted to make sure you understood that it could still be a software problem. Some software programs can eat memory or resources when left running, and a PC that is perfectly stable when booted can slowly become increasingly unstable as some piece of software slowly eats up a resource.

Nice call, Tony, but no cigar. Freshly booted or not, emplode still hangs when the computer is warm, will load at least 7 CDs worth when the computer is cold.

what tray apps are you running?

Nothing too fancy... the windows task scheduler; something that allows me to change my screen resolution; something that allows me to change volume settings; something for my Matrox video card to change video properties; something to change my mouse properties; a little tsr called cliptrak from PC magazine that stores clipboard entries for later retrieval; Disc Detector; Real Player; modem connection; ICQ; time of day. Nothing too heavy duty there, and I have tried it with every one of them turned off that I could and still had lockups.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Hmmm. The Rio600 has had USB transfer problems with some PCs - I seem to remember K6 machines had something to do with it. They released a software patch for the unit which helped this; I wonder what it was. Would be useful to know!

Hugo

I've been running Emplode on Win98SE and Windows 2000 Pro with no problems uploading upto 4Gb of data at any one time to the EMPEG (It's now full). I upload using Ethernet. If you're using USB and have an AMD processor you may experience problems, we have had issues with USB devices on AMD based PC's in the past. The resolution, at least for the PC's we had was to do a BIOS upgrade. It turned out that their was a problem with the USB's data buffers.



-------------
MK II, (Blue but should be Amber) SN: 118

My desktop machine has the latest BIOS, I'm not sure about my Sony Vaio laptop, but I didn't find a BIOS upgrade on their web site. I transfer gigabytes of data all the time using other pieces of hardware and software with no problem.

Ok, Well I'm not sure this has anything to do with your problem but I thought I would tell you about this just in case. I was having trouble with emplode locking up at the very end of a sync (on stage 10..) really after the sync when it is trying to get the new info from Empeg. What I did was hooked up both Serial and USB and did a sync via USB. It didn't happen every time but sometimes the player would crash after a sync and go to a shell (on the developer version, not sure about consumer).. I could then issue commands via the serial and execute player again and emplode would complete without errors and not locking up.
So If you are having this same problem it may appear that emplode has locked up when in reality it is waiting for a crashed player to respond. Perhaps the empeg could detect this and reexecute the player when it crashes.

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

...locking up at the very end of a sync (on stage 10..)

No, not the same thing. It makes it part way through the list of tracks and locks up, usually in the middle of a track. Have to ctrl-alt-del to clear emplode, then reboot the computer before emplode will reload.

The problem is almost certainly in the PC, not the empeg, and may be an incompatibility between emplode and my particular hardware configuration.

If my PC is cold (just turned on after being powered down for a few hours) emplode will run just fine. When it is warm, about half a CD's worth of music is the most that emplode will download.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

The problem is almost certainly in the PC, not the empeg, and may be an incompatibility between emplode and my particular hardware configuration.

I'm not so sure the problem is on the PC. When I watched it, it did look like the Empeg just decides to reboot half way through, Emplode doesn't have any idea that's what happened and freezes waiting for Empeg to respond.

I'm willing to give the suggestion a try, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to convince the Empeg to continue through the shell prompt.

If the empeg is mounted read/write, and a it doesn't receive any commands for a certain period of time, it will remount read-only and reboot. This is simply a self-protection device for the empeg's filesystems. If the PC's USB stack is upset and no data is getting through, the empeg will do this.

Hugo

I have had the same problems with my Mk 2 player from day one - using both USB and ethernet. I am running Win98SE, on an ABIT P3 500 (real Intel), consumer image 1.0. I can often get away with syncing a single album (though not always) but as soon as I load up 2-3.. I get sync issues. I have also had the system subsequently lockup while playing (~20 times).

I've had the unit a month... and it's been a very frustrating month. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. Maybe we can get a fix soon.

Mike

Please, if you have problems, mail bugs@empeg.com with as much detail as possible. I know 1.01 has some sync improvements, but we need as much info as we can get to nail down problems.

Thanks,
Hugo

I did send this info to bugs@empeg.com and didn't receive an acknowledgement that it had been received and wasn't asked for more detail. Don't know if I should have emailed "support" as well..

I have the same problem that you have, running USB on a Compaq 233. Here's something that worked for me: set up an ethernet connection. Like you I couldn't upload more then one album in one sync. After setting up an ethernet connection like someone suggested elsewhere on this board I did 2 subsequent uploades of 4-8 albums without any problems.

Hendrik
#080000456
18Gb green

Here's something that worked for me: set up an ethernet connection. Like you I couldn't upload more then one album in one sync. After setting up an ethernet connection like someone suggested elsewhere on this board I did 2 subsequent uploades of 4-8 albums without any problems.

Do you mean:

a) Use the ethernet cable to perform your synchs?
or
b) Install a dummy TCP/IP driver into the network control panel, even if you don't have an ethernet card?

If you mean (a), that's not an option for everyone because it involves spending money on an ethernet card.

If you mean (b), did you report that to the Empeg guys? If that worked, it would mean that there's a bug in Emplode that can be easily fixed if they had that information to diagnose it with.

___________
Tony Fabris

Here's something that worked for me: set up an ethernet connection.

Yeah, I've already reached that conclusion. I have officially given up USB as a viable emplode resource as of tonight. Tomorrow I see if I can get a network running on my PC.

If you mean (a), that's not an option for everyone because it involves spending money on an ethernet card.

It's not the money, it's the resources. My PC is pretty heavily configured, right now a quick count shows an even dozen cables coming out of the back of it, and whether I still have a PCI slot and an IRQ available is anybody's guess.

Of course, by the time I finish bugging Tony about how to set up the TCP/IP addresses or whatever it is I have to do to make a network he'll probably move to another state and change his email address...

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Yeah, I've already reached that conclusion. I have officially given up USB as a viable emplode resource as of tonight. Tomorrow I see if I can get a network running on my PC.

Before you panic and do that (you shouldn't have to do it, USB should be a viable option for everyone), have you tried flashing a more recent BIOS into the motherboard of the troublesome machine?

It could be something that simple. I've heard of USB troubles being solved by BIOS upgrades.

___________
Tony Fabris

have you tried flashing a more recent BIOS into the motherboard of the troublesome machine?

An excellent idea, Tony. I'll look into that.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I'm sorry, I should have expressed myself a bit clearer here.

I meant:

a) Use the ethernet cable to perform your synchs "after installing a nic into my computer"

I've installed a 3com nic in my computer and got a crosscable to connect it to Empeg. I've had a look at earlier questions about setting up an ethernet connection and that worked fine for me.
I agree with the statement that USB should work, but for some reason it doesn't on my computer (I think the problem is hardware related, I've had USB problems before with an USB ISDN adaptor, and yes, I've got the latest bios).

Anyway, the connection to Empeg is stable now, and that's what counts!

Hendrik
#080000456
18Gb green

I have the problem with USB, ethernet, and serial. I am *anxiously* awaiting the next empeg s/w release to see if it helps. In the next couple of days I'll probably try syncing via my work laptop to see if the problem is machine-dependent in my case.

Mike

I have the problem with USB, ethernet, and serial.

What exactly are your symptoms? Perhaps it's some other, known bug?

If you have a null-modem cable, can you tell us what the player says at boot time with Hyperterminal? (See the "FAQ" Section of this BBS for instructions on how to do that.)

___________
Tony Fabris

Perhaps the empeg could detect this and reexecute the player when it crashes.

It does. The only time it doesn't is if you've previously manually quit to a shell prompt in that session.

This behaviour is useful when debugging since a constantly crashing player doesn't scroll loads of stuff up the screen but works in the general user case since they won't be quitting the player.

If the player is crashing and producing a trace-back please send it to us since we can hopefully decipher it and fathom out why.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Interesting tidbit of experience that I will share; Uploading 4Gb of songs that I had DL of the net (I own the original of all the copyrighted material of course) yielded 9 sync problems. Uploading 4Gb of songs that I had ripped myself - 0 sync problems!

I only synced them separately because they were in different directory structures. Same drive, same computer, same usb connection.

Differences between sync batches are; My ripped files are all vbr (normal/high), the DL'd files are various bit rates. All my ripped files have consistent tags, who knows what's on the ones I DL'd. some Dl'd songs may be incomplete. What else?

I will try it again to see if the results are the same. But not for a couple days - I was almost in tears ;-) trying to get the first batch in...I would like to enjoy a few songs before I delete and resync.


-Doug
(Mk2-12G-Blue)

I wouldn't put in too much effort testing release 1.0 - in house we're already seven builds ahead of that. Release 1.01 is now imminent, with a LOT of bug fixes.

Rob

Good point. Thanks Rob.



-Doug
(Mk2-12G-Blue)

Does this seem to be a problem with emplode or more likely a problem with my system?

Give some big congratulations to Hugo!

He worked over the USB drivers in the 1.01 pre-release beta of emplode, and I just finished a 4.1 gigabyte test download (duplicating all the music in my "classical" genre -- now I get to go in and delete it all!) and it ran without a hitch. This is about 20 times larger download than I had ever successfully run before.

The 1.01 emplode and player software should be available for general distribution in the next day or so, so morrisdl, hendrik, CharlieP, Ezekiel, bluelobster, phaigh, mtempsch and all the others who had the problem and participated in this thread -- it looks like the guys@empeg came through for us once again.

Was there ever any doubt?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Give some big congratulations to Hugo!

Seconded. Bravo to Mike, Hugo, Roger, John, Peter, and the rest of the Empeg team for a great 1.01 release. As I said on the Alpha team mailing list, that's one heck of a release-notes file.

___________
Tony Fabris

Just got back from a week in SFO and this is a nice suprise. Tomorrow night I'll give it a shot and let people know how it goes. I'll try both usb & ethernet (as I seem to have trouble with both) and post my results. I also received the modified harness(es) today for the thump, which I'll probably get around to later on this week. I have two extra, anybody need one? Now if I can only get them to send me two more empeg's n/c... ;-)

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

Well the first shot at ethernet sync did the same old trick: do one song then fail at stage five with a 0xfffffffffffff error. The unit then has to undergo a disk integrity check (which it is currently doing). I'll check USB after dinner. The 1.01 update applied fine so I have that going for me, which is nice.
More posting later.

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

I took the opportunity to go over my ID3 tags on my main collection. I'll be loading about 1900 songs up via USB tonight (as soon as it finishes deleting the older copies first). I'll post with results tomorrow night.

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

USB 7.86GB upload = No Problem. Late for work.

-Z

just say you weren't paying much attention...