It would be nice to have ethernet available as part of the car docking connector, for those of us with wireless ethernet in our autos.

This would save having to manually connect/disconnect the enet cable
when taking the player in/out of the car.

-gbeck

Still waiting #145xx.....

Ethernet on the car docking sleeve was one of their top priorities when they were designing it. Unfortunately, they couldn't source a car docking connector with enough pins. The current connnector has all the pins used up for more critical components.

___________
Tony Fabris

wouldn't there be a way to just build a standard rj-45 connecter without the locking pin into the sled so that it would slot into the existing ethernet port? the only problem would be the "wobble" that the car docking connector has in order to allow for a little movement on insertion, but it doesn't seem too hard to do.

||| loren.cox
||| 080000446
||| 12GB blue

wouldn't there be a way to just build a standard rj-45 connecter without the locking pin into the sled so that it would slot into the existing ethernet port?

Let us know if you're sucessful. Something tells me it wouldn't be that easy in practice. Otherwise, Empeg would have done it in the production models.

___________
Tony Fabris

yeah - the empeg is never going to go in exactly the same way, and a cat5 connector isn't going to have the leeway that it'll need:( I would imagine you can really mess up your connector this way...
-mark

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

Hrmm...alright, i've been challenged..heheh. I have no plans for wireless ethernet, but i'll do some rigging over the weekend to see what i can come up with. I tend to think you guys are right though, the insertion isn't going to go straight every time and will probably just cram the rj-45 into the back of the unit. I'll keep you posted.

||| loren.cox
||| 080000446
||| 12GB blue

While a MarkIII player is still a distant glimmer in EMPEG's eyes, I think a good solution would be to build a PCMCIA or similar expansion slot into the MarkIII. This would allow you to buy an off-the-shelf wireless Ethernet card, stuff it into your EMPEG, and it would work both inside your car, inside your house, at your office, etc., and it wouldn't require adding any new pins to the docking connector.

Furthermore, when 3G cel phone networks are deployed, many more consumers would likely want to hook their EMPEG to the cellular network, such that they can "phone home" from anywhere. It would be most sensible for the MarkIII to be agnostic toward these various network standards and an expansion slot is probably the best way to do it.

Where would this putative slot go? The main PCB is entirely surface mount, and
completely full. Believe me, I know, since I keep having to squeeze in more,
and I'm at the point where a single 0805 SMT resistor is a tight fit. The
only way you could fit even the connector would be to go to double-sided
construction, which would jack up the cost considerably.

In addition, where would the slot come out? On the front? No room, the VFD is
in the way. Out the back? Wouldn't fit, again, and even if it did it would be
well-shielded inside the car-mount cage, not ideal for RF cards!

I'm afraid such additions, fun though they might be, aren't really practicable
for anything based even remotely on the current design. We did consider it way
back during the initial design phase, but came up against these problems, which there isn't a really effective solution to without MAJOR design changes. The
10baseT socket gives a lot of room for expansion, though.

Patrick

Opinions expressed in this email may contain up to 42% water by weight, and are mine. All mine.

...a double-din Empeg w/ color lcd screen and many of these features...
-mark

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

Where would this putative slot go? The main PCB is entirely surface mount, and completely full.

Caveat: I'm a software guy. All I can say about hardware is that it magically gets smaller, faster, and cheaper every year, often through custom ASICs and other commercial integrated parts. If we're talking about a box that doesn't ship until 2002, I'd imagine you could recover some space with one of these all-in-one embedded CPU products. Is it far-fetched to imagine the RAM, bus/disk controller, and Ethernet to be on-chip with the CPU? Furthermore, if you were (theoretically) working in conjunction with a major Japanese stereo manufacturer, you'd have access to their parts box, which may include other useful integrated parts, and well as custom-manufactured front panel displays.

Likewise, by 2002, 2.5" laptop hard disks will likely be in the 60-100GB range. If EMPEG went to a single-drive design, you would have room for slots or whatever. Ideally, you'd mount a PCMCIA slot vertically, with front access. I don't think you have room for that in a single-DIN slot, so you either need to find a smaller standard (Sony MemoryStick?), or go horizontal.

Thinking really far out: maybe the car stereo world will standardize on a digital-pre-out and put the D/A's inside the amps. That could cut out the entire analog section of the EMPEG and would help with the ground-loop issues that some folks seem to suffer. A digital standard for in-car stereo distribution could potentially be Ethernet or USB (both are plenty fast enough -- uncompressed CD audio is only 1.5Mbits/sec). At that point, you only have to bridge your in-car network to an external wireless network, placing the antenna in whatever part of your car is far away from other electrical noise.

I'm afraid such additions, fun though they might be, aren't really practicable for anything based even remotely on the current design.

Absolutely. But this is the "wish list" forum, and we are talking about a next generation "MarkIII" box. In terms of small deltas to the current MarkII (would that be a "MarkII+", a "Mark//e" or what?), you're obviously limited in what you can do and the box you built is an amazing thing.

a "MarkII+", a "Mark//e" or what?

You mean Mark][+, don't you? Didn't only Mark/// (total flop - guys@empeg, don't take it as role model) introduce slashes? Wow, another one old enough to remeber those....

BTW, I support your reasoning, but who knows what happens two years down the road...

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Unfortunately, they couldn't source a car docking connector with enough pins.

I have never understood this arguement. To me it make no sense at all. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize if you don't have enough pins on one plug, use two!

Alex Lear

Mmm. I have an Apple /// (with HDD & monitor), plus a couple of ][e's and a Lisa...

Hugo

Two plugs are a pain for several reasons: docking effort & alignment is one, cost is another (our complete wiring harness, both ends, costs us over $60). Decent docking connectors are a pain in the a** to find.

Hugo

Mmm. I have an Apple /// (with HDD & monitor), plus a couple of ][e's and a Lisa...

Wow, I only read about Lisa (but was stuck for a time writing all kinds of wierd analytical and laboratory automation software on various ][s...). Pretty revolutionary for its time, wasn't it? Pitty it got diluted into Mac. And ///'s HDD has, what, 5MB perhaps? Nice little museum you have there

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Didn't only Mark/// (total flop - guys@empeg, don't take it as role model) introduce slashes?

For what it's worth:

][, ][+, ///, ][e, //e, //c, IIgs, IIe*, IIc Plus*

(in chronological order, if I'm remembering them correctly. * = I don't remember if these have slashes or I's)

The slashes were introduced into the ][ line with the Enhanced //e - which is the easiest way to tell the difference between an enhanced one and an unenhanced one.

(if you're wondering why I know this stuff - http://apple2.tffenterprises.com/. :)


-----
Daniel M. Zimmerman
Mk.2 #060000058, 36GB, Red
Mk.1 #00101, 10GB, Blue

I don't have an empeg (yet!), but I'll be buying one when I get a new car next summer. In the mean time, I'm going to try to catch up on all the ideas here on the BBS.

When I read that the MkII has ethernet, the first thing that came to mind was to see if that was passed through in the docking connector.

What I'd like to do is what you're planning... take an RJ45, break the clip off and maybe file down the sides (so it's an easier fit). Then I plan to run cat5 from the docking bay to an easily accessable RJ45 port. That way, I can take my laptop and jack it in to the ethernet port on the dash.

--The Amigo

Post deleted by Geek696

No, the empeg is totally self-contained within the head unit - up to 60GB of it :)

Hugo