I have to release the source only if I release the tool :-)

actually, I was trying to get it working over USB before dumping the app+source on my ftp site.
it seems to work now. i'm just writing a crude backup utility that will walk the database and dump everything that's not a playlist.
should be tonight or tomorrow.

meanwhile, if there's a specific aspect of the emptool source you need to understand feel free to ask away.

i'm just writing a crude backup utility that will walk the database and dump everything that's not a playlist.

But on the contrary, playlists (and tag files) are the most interesting things to back up (provided we have a way to upload them back to the player)! So, my suggestions for additional empegmirror features (not very complicated, I believe) would be:

1) Along with a tune file copy the corresponding tag file. Include FID in the filenames of both. (Ehm, use id3lib to patch tune file's ID3 tags according to tag data ? Well, perhaps too much; this can easily be done with a stand-alone utility.)
2) Copy playlists as well.
3) Allow for backing up just a part of the player's content (so that users without large enough desktop storage still can back up piecemeal, say to CD-R). The program could have two optional parameters, FID to start from and amount of storage available; it would print the last FID copied when finished.
4) Add copying in another direction.
5) Back up, as a special file, the part of flash containing EQ presets and similar setup data. I have no idea whether we know enough to do that, though.

This way we could back up and subsequently restore our empegs almost completely.

I think this is a start of a very nice utility . I don't plan to use it at the moment since ftp does all I need, but not all users mess with their empeg software, add development tools etc. Besides, there are MkI players without ethernet...

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

a proper backup utility is of course the ultimate goal. I'm still in the design stage for that.