Carbon copy of mail to bugs...

Dear Empeg,

Last night I finally got win98 working on a machine (I have sundry Unix and NT
machines at work, win95, and Linux at home but had no access to win98). I
hooked up the unit and ran Emplode with no problems. When it went to sync it
worked but was pretty slow. I let it sit for a while and it loaded two of the
four tracks that I'd given it then gave up with an error.

Okay I figured, the software is still a little twitchy but we're able to make a
connection and install stuff. So the next obvious step was to upgrade the empeg
s/w.

I grabbed the developer Beta 6c, and followed the steps...finding
player...erasing flash...writing flash...the progress bar goes a little way and
then stopped for a very long time. After a while I cancelled. Obviously the
player was dead. Give it power and all you get is a steady blue light.

I tried redoing the upgrade, appears to stop in the same place.

I tried downloading the upgrade image again in case it was corrupt but the
upgrade still hangs while writing to flash.

I tried downloading all of the consumer and the developer upgrades, versions 6
and 6c fresh. And all of them hang writing to flash.

Did I do something wrong? What do I do to fix it? Yesterday I spent $800 (US)
installing the player, a new amp, and new speakers and now I'm completely dead.
Before my broken upgrade the unit functioned fine, it came with 5c, it's one
track sounded too sweet, the FM wasn't picking up much but maybe the upgrades
addressed that?

yours, Dean Johnson

I know I am not qualified to answer this as I don't have m empeg yet, but I think I remember reading somewhere here that you need to switch to serial to upgrade the empeg software, then you can go back to USB for u/ling tracks. You didn't say which connection you used so I thought I'd throw in my $0.02.

Best of luck,
Jake

No problem with USB versus Serial. I don't have USB on that machine.

I got two nice notes from Hugo. He asked if I could redo it and specify exactly where it
bailed out. He also had me attached a terminal program to the serial port and watch as I
turned it on. Here's what I saw:

> empeg-car v0.04 19990121 (altman@empeg.com)
> If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
> or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!
> (undefined instruction vector)

Pretty cool IMHO. Of course that last bit just means the flash is hosed.

He also shared a linux binary flasher that I was unable to unzip. I did have to do some
work today so I let it slide until people started heading home and I could experiment a bit.

So, I just tried Emplode Beta 5C on a win2000 machine we have here at work and no sweat.
It dropped the Consumer Beta 6A image on the first time completely as advertised. My quickie
win98 install at home must be flakey. So I'm going to work late while my Empeg sucks up a
few handfuls of mp3s. The USB didn't seem to work so it's going in slow motion over the serial port.

I'm a happy boy.

yours, Dean