One of my goals for my Empeg Logo Editor has been to eliminate the need for a manual power-cycle when you send a logo to the Empeg. Removing and re-inserting the power connector causes wear and tear-- it would be more efficient if the software could reboot the unit to begin the flashing process.

To that end, I've been researching the way that EmpegUpgrade goes about rebooting the player to perform an upgrade. I spent some time looking at the emptool source code, but despite what I learned, I was unable to get my modifications to download.c working at all.

So, as the old engineer's saying goes: "When all else fails, use brute force".

I packet-sniffed the serial output from EmpegUpgrade.exe. Now my "upload.exe" program just sends those bytes blindly to the serial port. And on my player, on my test system, it seems to work just dandy. It reboots the player, then the player accepts the upgrade. All seems well.

My concern is that I've got absolutely no clue what those bytes are telling the player to do. There is one big 279-byte packet that really concerns me. I haven't gone through it byte-by-byte to see what it's sending. For all I know, it could be incompatible with Mark2 players, it could be serial-number-specific data, it could be the dimensions of the Playmate of the month, I don't know.

So here's what I'm asking, anyone reading this: If you're the type who's not afraid of doing something risky to your player, would you mind testing my code for me? In theory, the worst that can happen is that you'll need to re-apply one of Empeg's .upgrade files if this does something horrible. But I'm not sure what it'll do on someone else's player, so there's some risk involved.

Are you game? Cool! Here's what to do.

- Download and install version 1.1 of my Empeg Logo Editor. Make sure it works for you as-is, and that you can send logos to the player without a problem. You will have to manually unplug and re-plug the power to send a logo.

- Download and unzip this replacement file attached to this message. Copy it over the existing one that came with the original logo editor program.

- Try sending some logos with the new file in place. If all is well, it should be able to send a logo to the player without the need for a power pull.

- Lemme know if it worked! (If possible, tell me your system configuration and the type of Empeg you're using. Hopefully, I'll get responses from both Mk1 and Mk2 owners on several OS's.)

If I get positive feedback, the next release of the logo editor will incorporate this change.

Now, on to the advice...

Does anyone know what the heck EmpegUpgrade is sending before that reboot? Everything I read in the Emptool sources indicated that it should only need one tiny little packet, only about a dozen bytes long. But I couldn't make that work, so I had to send a huge 279-byte packet in addition to a few small ones. Whazzup with that and am I doing anything dangerous?

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Tony Fabris