both the 1.02 beta and the 1.03 release candidate

You should not be using the Beta 1.02, which had a few problems; you should have the full release 1.02. 1.03 would not give you much in the way of benefits for a Mk 1 anyway, since it is mainly just 1.02 with the new tuner features added. There's a link at the top of the BBS to 1.02.

Can you remeber which version of the software was on the machine? This could be important, as around Beta 0.8 there was a change in the partition structure of the disks. This may have caused problems, as only 0.8 had the mechanism in place to change the partitions around. I seem to recall you had to apply 0.8 before any later version, but I may be mistaken here.

installing the emplode software on my windows 2000 laptop

When you install emplode, you need to have certain other service packs and upgrades in place for emplode to work properly on your PC. The required software is shown in an information window as you install emplode, and it is important to get one particular upgrade to Internet Exploder. Check this out and see that your machine has what you need installed.

of course i expected to wipe this, but the seemingly persistent files and playlists seemed strange

The music is stored on disk, and the player application and OS is stored in Flash memory along with a boot loader. When you upgrade the player software, you are changing only the OS (infrequent) and the Player application. The player expects a certain partition layout on the disk, as does emplode when it connects to the player to do a download of music. The partitions, and their contents, are unaffected by an upgrade. It is quite reasonable that the music is still there. Have you got licensed copies of the music that is on the disk?

The synchronisation process failed during stage 2:
Player error 0xfffffff8

This is a good diagnostic, but I can't remember what it means. Because it is early on in the sequence (stage 2) then it is probably something pretty drastic. Only the lads at empeg can really answer what it is.

What I would suggest is the following:

1) Do NOT "wipe" or reformat your disks yet. This is a weapon of last resort.
2) Upgrade the player to 1.02, developer image.
3) Start emplode and connect.
4) Turn on logging in emplode; unforch, I haven't got it handy here but I think it is under "Player Properties"
5) Try to synch, say one or two tracks to the player and record any errors.
6) Send the log file to support and ask for assistance.
7) Connect to the serial port with the serial cable, using something like Hyperterm
8) Repeat the synch and have a look at the output, and post it here for us to look at.
9) DON'T WIPE YOUR DISKS YET.




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