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That's about all I can ever hope to do on mine, so I need to sort out some sort of remote display somehow.

Yes, in your case I think so: if the display and the radio aren't a different "entity" (= different I-BUS addressing), you won't have a chance to force the display something different the radio firmware expect.

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So your empeg mounts vertically? My changer mounts horizontally under the rear shelf.

The same as mine (there's a bay - something like a non-standard mini-rack - that holds the radio, that also include the power amplifier IMHO, and the tv-tuner on the lower side.
Upper side there's the MKIII CD-based GPS navigator and finally, on the top off all things, there's the cd-changer (now the empeg with my adaptor, painted of black color). See the attached picture.
When I resolve the most big problem I have now (see below) I will remount everything and redefine the software, and of course publish everything (after a bit of cleanup) all the software on a web site.

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Up until now I have been powering off the cigarette lighter socket and have been getting noticeable alternator whine.

I have to first try to connect the empeg directly to the battery (tonight I'm too destroyed to even think about it, but I'll do it tomorrow) to check if the problem disappear.

The sound is crisp clear, but I can hear everything.. the HDD powering up, the engine, lights, and so on.

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I was planning to move to power off the Ibus connector hoping the whine would go away - Apparently it might not it seems. The only option might be a good ground loop isolator.

Ground loop isolator = something before the +12V/GND or after the pre-amp output? If later.. mmm.. how much sound you will lose that way.

Also, I anyway tought: "But my original cd-changer works quite well and sounds perfectly with the very same input" (ok, not cosidering different power consuption), so I called the car-shop where I bought my 2nd-hand E46 asking for a dead changer to analyze.. and the guy promised me one

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I think the original software will be the best. I doubt you'll get much lower CPU usage with anything else. Turning off visuals would be a good start though.

Then when the visuals are turned off, they are really "off"? I never checked this thing with "top" or something like this.
Also another question: I tried some 3.x alphas with not very good results (2.0 is rock solid). Does the database rebuild problem & the "hard-disk always on" issues has been resolved in latest build? OGG Vorbis is so nice

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I'm finding some "lag" in the button presses but that's more than likely my interface code doing wierd things.

My very own problem is that the "lag" most of the time is due the delay from /proc/empeg_notify writing to real seek by the player (of course with hard-disk already turned on and ready - something don't appears with real keys), but it's not so big deal for me.

About knowing when the player is really in pause, I'm thinking to examine the display frame-buffer in the || area sign.. ok, lame but it should work.

Any more elegant ideas?


Attachments
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