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#279483 - 14/04/2006 22:31 I'm lovin it - or not.
Raas
stranger

Registered: 27/01/2002
Posts: 37
Hi All,

I don't often post, but have owned an empeg for a number of years. I read (or stalk) this bbs on a bi-weekly basis and have enjoyed the sigkill, international solidarity, humour and not least help of so many people that contribute to this great community.

But to be blunt (could you see this coming?), I have a gripe! I love the carplayer with its pca tuner, I use it on a daily basis as the only headunit in my car.

But it has flaws, 99% have been solved by looking here, but after 5 years of owning one, they are becoming sigkill so much more apparent. I'm aware this is becoming a rant, but I've had a few beers so I'll keep going...

Is v3a11 the furthest the empeg can go?

and...

If so (wait while I duck), why is v3a so much 'worse' than v2b13 that was released ~4 years ago?

cheers,

Raas

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#279484 - 14/04/2006 23:09 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: Raas]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
"a" is for "alpha", "b" is for "beta". Wikipedia probably defines those terms nicely but, in brief, "beta" means "almost release quality", and "alpha" means "experimental quality (ie. buggy)".

To answer the question more fairly, v3a11 is a regression (w.r.t. sigkills et al.) because it involved a major shift in the underlying code base -- massive changes.

Cheers

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#279485 - 14/04/2006 23:16 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: Raas]
rob
carpal tunnel

Registered: 21/05/1999
Posts: 5335
Loc: Cambridge UK
V2 was a development branch specific to the car player, which was a supported product at that time. Testing, debugging and all those good things were carried out and the resultant v2-final is very stable as a result.

V3 is a sort of bonus release. Its development branch was dedicated to the Rio Karma and other new products. Keeping the car player target alive was a personal undertaking for some of the developers, who largely put in the necessary effort in their own time (and who had a software manager who tolerated/encouraged this!). We wanted to release from that branch because it has a whole new audio path, support for additional formats, and many new features over V2. However there was no official testing and no official sanction from the owners of the codebase (at that time) to do any of this for the car player. The most recent V3 releases were developed as specials to coincide with owners meets, thanks to a few individuals (notably Peter and Dave) giving up their weekends to do this. Now, from what I hear, even the V3 branch has been deprecated, tucked up, and put to bed - perhaps permanantly.

I would be surprised if there is another release - and if there is, it will be thanks to an individual digging out the code and putting in their own time to work on it. As there are increasingly few empeg developers remaining at Sigmatel (who own the code), this seems unlikely. I'd like to be proved wrong.

In practice, I choose to run V3 (and have done so for the last couple of years) as its quirks are fairly well understood and are generally easy to avoid or work around.

Rob

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#279486 - 14/04/2006 23:46 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: rob]
Raas
stranger

Registered: 27/01/2002
Posts: 37
Thankyou for the honest response.

I develope software and know the red tape and issues often found. In all honesty I assumed alpha led to beta which led to.. well whatever, if there's no chance of that, or no-one available then v3a11 is the final nail!

Thanks again.

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#279487 - 15/04/2006 03:30 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: mlord]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
So, for the few of us out here not getting it, what is a "sigkill"?

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#279488 - 15/04/2006 05:06 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: drakino]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5914
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
Wikipedia to the rescue again, SIGKILL.
_________________________
Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday

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#279489 - 15/04/2006 05:30 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: andy]
RobotCaleb
pooh-bah

Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
I know what a sigkill is. I don't get why it appears in his post unless he is trying to make some odd point. In which case I still don't get it.

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#279490 - 15/04/2006 10:17 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: RobotCaleb]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
It appears in a tiny popup box on the front panel display of his empeg (courtesy of Hijack), just about every time that the player s/w crashes.

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#279491 - 15/04/2006 11:21 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: rob]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4172
Loc: Cambridge, England
Quote:
I would be surprised if there is another release - and if there is, it will be thanks to an individual digging out the code and putting in their own time to work on it.

Unfortunately it's not even as simple as that. Some components of a car-player build, notably the MP3 decoder, were licensed to Rio in such a way that the licences didn't pass to Sigmatel when the development team was purchased, last July. That's why we hurried 3.0 alpha 11 out in the few days between finding out about Sigmatel, and the purchase going through: once we became Sigmatel, we had to delete those components, and the car v3 branch no longer built.

I too would be surprised if there were any more car-player releases. Really, alphas 10 and 11 should have been called betas 1 and 2, as those releases were made from the v3-only branch; all the earlier alphas contained random new Karma, Sapphire, and Kyanite features from the trunk, so their stability was all over the shop. Alphas 10 and 11 contained only bugfixes over alpha 8, the branching point. (Alpha 9 was a bit of a disaster IIRC.) There's a bit more on that subject here -- outcome #2 came to pass.

Personally, I've used 3.0alpha11 Receiver Edition day in, day out since it was released -- or rather, since an hour or so before it was released -- and it only falls over very occasionally. If you've got a player which didn't sigkill very much when it first got alpha 11, but does sigkill a lot now, maybe your hardware's getting flaky...

Peter

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#279492 - 15/04/2006 11:30 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: peter]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
I get about one sigkill every 3 days I'm using the player as a player, and always have since going to 3a11. The difference is when I installed 3a11 I always used the player as a player, and now I use it a lot as something capable of aux in.

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#279493 - 15/04/2006 16:10 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: peter]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
and it only falls over very occasionally.


v3a11 very rarely falls over for me, but it's hard to say -- I don't use it day-in, day-out. I also don't use the tuner, which I think might account for more instability, because it never got as much in-house testing as the MP3 playback.
_________________________
-- roger

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#279494 - 15/04/2006 21:18 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: Raas]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
Is v3a11 the furthest the empeg can go?


If you're making complaints about sigkill errors, then definitely use 2.0 final, or 2.0 beta 13. Those are as stable as the software is going to get.

Is there a particular feature in the v3a11 that you absolutely need to use?
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#279495 - 15/04/2006 23:54 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: peter]
SE_Sport_Driver
carpal tunnel

Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
Is there a way to release a player update that does not include the MP3 decoder since all of us already have it on our players? Ie, more of a "patch" than a completely new install?
_________________________
Brad B.

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#279496 - 16/04/2006 22:52 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
mrfixit
enthusiast

Registered: 14/06/2002
Posts: 337
Am I missing somthing, or am I very lucky,I have been using both of my players for 5 years now and they never have a problem. I have one in each car and they never misbehave. I do use the v2 final and some older ver. of hijack 350... I think, but they always seem to work fine. (mrfixit knocks on wood very hard)
_________________________
Ben
mk2a 60gig green/Greenlights Buttons
mk2a 60gig green/Greenlights Buttons
mk2a 40gig blue no illumination....yet
hijacked

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#279497 - 17/04/2006 15:05 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: mrfixit]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
Am I missing somthing, or am I very lucky,I have been using both of my players for 5 years now and they never have a problem.

You aren't particularly lucky. The only thing you're missing is the standard thing with all internet forums: The only people who post are the ones who are having trouble. The ones for whom "it just works" never post. So you get forums filled with nothing but troubleshooting threads, and not a lot of posts saying "hey mine works great, goodbye".
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#279498 - 17/04/2006 15:14 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: tfabris]
mrfixit
enthusiast

Registered: 14/06/2002
Posts: 337
Well you have a very good point there. Maybe some of us should just post things like my empeg works great.
_________________________
Ben
mk2a 60gig green/Greenlights Buttons
mk2a 60gig green/Greenlights Buttons
mk2a 40gig blue no illumination....yet
hijacked

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#279499 - 17/04/2006 15:29 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: mrfixit]
Dignan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12318
Loc: Sterling, VA
I received my empeg sometime around July of 2000. Aside from an immediate VFD problem, mine had operated flawlessly until a couple months ago. (It's still broken - haven't gotten around to finish fixing it - but I have another one now.)
_________________________
Matt

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#279500 - 17/04/2006 15:35 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: mrfixit]
CrackersMcCheese
pooh-bah

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2489
Yup mine has never had a problem either and its in use about 8 hours a day.

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#279501 - 17/04/2006 15:51 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: CrackersMcCheese]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
My empeg works great, even after being heavily modified on the hardware side... Running hijack and 2.01... I like cross-fading and gapless, but I like stability (while driving) more...
_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#279502 - 17/04/2006 17:48 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: Raas]
schofiel
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
I would have a look at your hardware first before assigning SIGKIL faults to the system, or player, software. Have you had a memory upgrade? If so, get it checked out.
_________________________
One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

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#279503 - 18/04/2006 19:55 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: tfabris]
Raas
stranger

Registered: 27/01/2002
Posts: 37
Hi,

I use the radio for the majority of journey's these days, so it would be handy to have the search capability easily accessable. I can't remember which was the previous stable release to have this feature.

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#279504 - 18/04/2006 19:58 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: schofiel]
Raas
stranger

Registered: 27/01/2002
Posts: 37
I'm not sure if your reply was to me, but just in case it was, I have a stock player with a pcats tuner module. In fairness the SIGKILL error and crash happens when using the tuner (on average once every 15 mins) and very rarely when listening to MP3.

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#279505 - 18/04/2006 22:44 Re: I'm lovin it - or not. [Re: Raas]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Quote:
I use the radio for the majority of journey's these days, so it would be handy to have the search capability easily accessable. I can't remember which was the previous stable release to have this feature.

2 beta 13 is the most stable release that seeks the radio. It's the version that's loaded on my players.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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