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#261990 - 02/08/2005 10:45 Capacity wars and the empeg
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Leave it to me to start a thread like this...

With the announcements of 160GB perpendicular storage laptop drives due out this winter, and with the promise of even larger drives soon to follow, I was wondering if anyone has been experimenting with the maximum capacity of an empeg. I know that some people have been pushing the limits with the maximum number of FIDs, and Mark has both written patches to extend the max FID and been tinkering with desktop large capacity hard drives. But any thoughts on what a theoretical maximum would be?

I know that hardware limitations exist based on the existing IDE interface (SATA would require some kind of adapter). But what other kind of limitations exist, and how far can the player be pushed? It would almost be worth the year I would need to spend reencoding everything to FLAC at that point...
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Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#261991 - 02/08/2005 11:44 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: pgrzelak]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Mark has already got LBA48 support in the kernel and I believe he tested it with a desktop drive

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#261992 - 02/08/2005 12:28 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: pgrzelak]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
Quote:
I know that hardware limitations exist based on the existing IDE interface (SATA would require some kind of adapter). But what other kind of limitations exist, and how far can the player be pushed? It would almost be worth the year I would need to spend reencoding everything to FLAC at that point...

If Mark's got LBA48 working, there shouldn't be any other barriers to really big Empegs. The size of the database is the limiting factor, not the size of the filesystems: if you take a working 200Gb player with 50,000 MP3s, rerip all those MP3s as FLAC with the same tags, and put them on a 1Tb player, it should work fine.

Peter

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#261993 - 02/08/2005 12:42 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: peter]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31602
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
If Mark's got LBA48 working, there shouldn't be any other barriers to really big Empegs.

Other than needing to partition it yourself. Isn't the builder image still not up to LBA48 support yet?
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Tony Fabris

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#261994 - 02/08/2005 12:43 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: peter]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
<eyes glaze over>

...1TB player...

<drool>
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Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#261995 - 02/08/2005 12:53 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: tfabris]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
Quote:
Other than needing to partition it yourself. Isn't the builder image still not up to LBA48 support yet?

Ah yes, good point. And that's just reminded me of another limitation: at some point drives will reach the size at which fsck fails even with swap enabled. You might want to add a bigger swap partition when you partition such a thing.

Peter

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#261996 - 02/08/2005 12:55 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: peter]
eliceo
enthusiast

Registered: 18/02/2002
Posts: 335
Do players disks with upgraded memory spindown when playing flac or wave in current alpha releases?

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#261997 - 02/08/2005 13:00 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: eliceo]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Quote:
Do players disks with upgraded memory spindown when playing flac or wave in current alpha releases?

If you have enough memory yes

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#261998 - 02/08/2005 13:27 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: tman]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3996
Loc: Manchester UK
Quote:
Quote:
Do players disks with upgraded memory spindown when playing flac or wave in current alpha releases?

If you have enough memory yes


But they don't stay spun down for very long. In fact with all the spinning up and down you might as well have them spun up permanently.
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Cheers,

Andy M

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#261999 - 02/08/2005 13:29 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: andym]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Agreed. Especially when there are issues with constantly filling the cache.

Still, it is certainly possible...
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Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#262000 - 02/08/2005 13:34 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: pgrzelak]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
No point using WAV anyway since we've got FLAC support. You get exactly the same output and it's significantly smaller.

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#262001 - 02/08/2005 15:30 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: peter]
schofiel
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
Can builder be re-visited?
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One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

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#262002 - 02/08/2005 16:09 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: schofiel]
Mataglap
enthusiast

Registered: 11/06/2003
Posts: 384
The builder doesn't seem like the real problem, especially with Roger's notes. The sparse superblock makes a huge difference with large drives.

The problem I always have is that upgrades expect the standard partioning, and laydown the image according to the standard partioning. That makes it really hard to do things like have larger swap spaces and such.

So even if there's a new builder, it's going to be trumped by using the standard tools to apply/upgrade any image. I realize there are ways to work around this (I've seen mentions of some kind of upgrade splitter a while ago and using Hijack and mark's upgrader works differently) but using the standard tools seems to be dependant on a specified partioning.

It's a bit of a toss-up, I guess. I find it easier and more reliable to manually format than to manually deal with an upgrade.

--Nathan

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#262003 - 02/08/2005 18:49 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: schofiel]
SE_Sport_Driver
carpal tunnel

Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
Quote:
Can builder be re-visited?


Several people have mentioned it'd be easy to do (for them, not me!).
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Brad B.

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#262004 - 02/08/2005 19:48 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
TigerJimmy
old hand

Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
I've been wanting to do this. Mark Lord sent me some notes on it, and we have Roger's instructions for a manual build. I'll try to have a shot at a new builder imagine within a week.

Jim

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#262005 - 03/08/2005 17:51 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: TigerJimmy]
image
old hand

Registered: 28/04/2002
Posts: 770
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
I tried to do this many blue moons ago for the developer upgrade, but was stopped from posting it because the upgrade file contained empeg files not allowed to be redistributed. I know it eventually is gonna be necessary, but I'd get an OK before proceeding to post.

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#262006 - 03/08/2005 19:25 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: schofiel]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
Quote:
Can builder be re-visited?


How about a shell script to build a new builder from various bits?

Well, maybe I should shut up. I have no time for this.

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#262007 - 03/08/2005 19:59 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: Daria]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Yeah, it seems if we're not allowed to redistribute the binary, then we could write a program that takes the separately downloaded installer, break it apart, and put it back together with changed bits. I don't have time for it, either, but someone (Rob Schofield?) has already made a program to break apart the installer images and create new ones.
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Bitt Faulk

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#262008 - 03/08/2005 20:07 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: image]
matthew_k
pooh-bah

Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
While copyright is an issue with everyday images, what non-gpl code would be needed for a builder image?

Matthew

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#262009 - 03/08/2005 21:13 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: wfaulk]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
It was Sven wasn't it?

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#262010 - 04/08/2005 09:15 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: matthew_k]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
While copyright is an issue with everyday images, what non-gpl code would be needed for a builder image?


None. It could be a shell script.
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-- roger

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#262011 - 06/08/2005 21:23 Re: Capacity wars and the empeg [Re: Roger]
image
old hand

Registered: 28/04/2002
Posts: 770
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
if you based it on the current builder, you'd have to make sure to not include the hard drive stress test program, but i'm not sure of what other proprietary software is in there. if it's only that piece, i can probably cook something up in about an hour. I'm just afraid that there would be still some things that will be included in the custom builder package that shouldn't have.

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