Empeg exhibition dashboard needs good home

The Ford Ka dashboard that Patrick and I converted into an early empeg booth prop (and which was used at least at IASCA, CES and various meets) has somehow ended up at Akai Digital. I hear from the remaining employee there that their office is likely to be cleared out any day now, so if anyone would like to have the dashboard please let me know ASAP.

It has its metal stand (which can be disassembled) and - I think - the empeg graphics panels for each side. It lacks its dock, although I daresay we could rustle one up from somnewhere. The dashboard illumination and the clock can be made to work quite easily with a 12V power supply.

I can't immediately lay hands on a photo, but I did find my expenses for CES 2001 - I guess it's too late to file them now?

Rob

You can see it in some of the riocar.org galleries:





Peter

*sigh* if it where just the rights for the empeg name and the software they gave away...

heck, i didn't know akai were still going! other than some rogers audio a few years ago, i'd say the akai reel to reel, cassette deck and amp i had were prob the best i've had! where are they based now?

hope ya find a home for it though.

Boelle, would it be so expensive to buy the rights back? not like any of it has been used in what, 7 years?
Hugh

i dont even know, but i could see some small benefits, beeing able to solve bugs... mix hijack and the player software in to one... etc etc.

what would cost money is the idea to put the empeg back in production

I see what you mean, I guess it would also be among the most expensive players to buy, as it was in it's day. I probably couldn't afford a new one at the mo, but even though i've not long had them, i dread the day that parts are just too hard to find!

a new flash drive empeg would be simply awesome!

not an bad idea... you can do it today simply by useing a ide->cf/flashdrive adapter

but a pure cf/flashdrive would be a better chioce... maybe along with an adapter for 2½ drives...

but one should always think that what you make should be comp. with the old players

yes, i've seen that and i'm quite interested in trying it on my 'spare' empeg (though i won't profess to understanding it all just yet!).

i'm wondering how much quicker upload times would be with a cf empeg, or whether it makes no difference, either way cf a more sound idea.

I'm still astounded by the low value of these players today, for what it does, there is nothing in it's league, certainly not that i'm aware of. i picked up my spare empeg for just £40, have spent a few hours and so far, $5 to repair it, it'll have an upgraded drive soon (poss to cf) and even then, will still be cheap considering what it can store and do!

There's really no significant effort required to install a CF card into an empeg as a drive replacement. Just run the disk builder as normal, and it all works.

The cheaper high-capacity CF cards, *ideal* for the empeg, are *slower* at uploading, but faster all around otherwise (startup, playback, ..).

Cheers

cheers Mark, it's next to do once the chip is replaced

Mmm.. I've even got a spare 32GB CF card sitting here..

really? for sale? i'd be interested in that, i know this is going off topic but would it be better to leave the 6gb hdd in place and add the cf card, or just run from the cf card only?

I think the whole point is to go completely solid state. Otherwise, a second hard drive is cheaper than a CF card.

Cheers

aye, that's what i intended to do, I just wondered (because i've seen people do use them as a second (slave?) drive) if there was any advantage to keeping a hdd, clearly not from what you say.

cheers,
Hugh

..for some value of "still going". Numark bought the brand four years ago and gradually divested most of the engineering talent. Today I believe only one of the original (as in MPC era) Akai engineers is left.



I think it would be challenging to find someone from whom to buy the rights for empeg or the codebase. I guess in theory Freescale now own all the IP, but I doubt they know that they do! I'm not sure anyone would notice let alone get upset if someone accidentally lost a CD containing the empeg code base at a Cambridge pub. The chances of that happening seem fairly slim though...

Rob

but do we know anyone who might accidentally lose it, and someone who might be fortunate enough to be in the right place, right time, to be able to find it?

I honestly don't know the logistics of making something like the empeg, i guess the hard part would be sourcing the components or finding someone to make the sub assemblies and the programming of chips etc,

putting it together is the easy bit, much easier than some stuff i had to build when i worked for an electronic manufacturer.

ok, so i'm probably waaay out of touch, but what would say, the main pcb in the empeg cost to make? surely someone has the cad's somewhere and it's a case of getting it printed, components fitted and the code installed?

even if this is all possible i prob wouldn't have the money to do it, but i'm curious!

Hugh

The hard part's the software. The hardware's easy. If we had the software, it could, relatively easily, be adapted to run on brand-new hardware, rather than the old design. We had it running on commodity PC hardware, running Windows, at one point.

You should go and trawl the bbs and read up on this. We have covered this ground again and again.

But in summary:

The hardware really isn't the hard part*, there are several people here on the bbs who could probably design a working empeg main board. If someone decided to make new empegs they wouldn't want to exactly duplicate the main board anyway, given that some of the chips aren't made any more.

The software is the issue. All the many man years of effort that went into make empeg as good as it is are locked up in the player code. And we don't have the source to that.

So the best that someone making new empegs now could hope for is a new main board design, with tweaks to the Linux kernel drivers to make the empeg player code think it was running on the old hardware.

Making new empegs just to run the existing player code seems a fairly pointless exercise, given that there doesn't seem to be a high demand for the existing ones (they change hands at less than $200). Sure you'd gain the ability to sync data onto it faster and you might get some spare memory to run extra apps alongside the player, but you'd still be running the old player code so the rest of the functionality would still be the same.



* at least if you are "God" or "God"-like

we where actual talking about getting hands on the source for the player software... who owns the rights right now?

Rob answered that one above:

"I think it would be challenging to find someone from whom to buy the rights for empeg or the codebase. I guess in theory Freescale now own all the IP, but I doubt they know that they do!"

yeah, but you have to ask them anyway... just "stealing" the rights is not the way to go...

It should be done proberly so that no one can be dragged to court

but are we talking about Freescale Semiconductor ? (www.freescale.com)

Where did I mention stealing anyone's rights ?

Yes.

that's why i used the " marks... could not find the right word for it

but if we got the rights for the player software along with the emplode software... who would continue the development...? it a "jackazz" at programming...

As I remember it went something like this:

Rio bought Empeg
DNNA bought Rio
Sigmatel bought the Empeg bits from DNNA
Freescale bought Sigmatel

Freescale probably don't know they own the rights to the empeg codebase.

my idea was to ask them.... a simple email should be enough.?

There are several people here qualified to hack on the Empeg player code.

and then again... if we had luck getting our hands on the rights.. should it be completely free... or should there be some limits ... ?

I'd encourage you to go and read up on our discussions on this in the past. Nothing has really changed since we last went over this.

may the search function be with me

well.. from what i can see there is one opinion that says leave it.... and some that go completely the other way...

So go for it then, but best of luck in finding someone at Freescale that who even know what you are asking about.

well.. they must have the stuff on disc somewhere...

anyway.. fired them an e-mail

Doubt Freescale do. Even if they do, it'll be next to impossible for them to find it.

well... at least it's a try... i guess that no one else has the source...

if hugo or some other have keept a copy of the source the problem is that smaller... then i only have to ask them about the getting the rights to the source and not have them to dig for some disc deep in some old archive

That is the problem. They don't have the right to give out the source. Those rights were part of the empeg company which has been bought and passed on several times now. The current owner of the empeg IP is probably Freescale.

Yeh, but it would be more easy if the problem is just to get the IP...

A bigger problem would be for freescale both have to give the IP and dig out a disc with the source

I think you're flogging a dead horse to be honest.

or an expensive one :-D

Let's not be too negative here. In the past, people have talked about getting hold of the empeg source code and doing something with it. But they've only talked about it; they've done nothing.

By sending an email to Freescale, Boelle is infinitely further advanced than anyone in the past. Let's see if he can run it down properly.

Who knows, if he gets back "yeah, you can use the IP, but we can't find the source code", then all we have to do is see if any of the original team have actually got a copy of the source code that they'd forgotten about. I know that I (unfortunately) don't have a copy.

Whatever happens, he's still put more effort into it than most people...

thanks roger

I see it this way... why not spend 5 min on an e-mail... worst case is that they reply that they will not give away the rights... but maybe they say go ahead... or that they want some money for the rights...

in any case it only took me 5 min to ask

but i like to be one step ahead.. what if they just give away the rights? should the source then be complete free or should there be some kind of control?

It'd be easiest for them (as well as, fortunately, most convenient for us) if they gave it away under one of the standard Open Source licences: MIT, BSD, LGPL, or GPL. Releasing it as GPL would mean nobody could make closed-source proprietary versions of it, a restriction which could conceivably appeal to them. On the other hand, it's not like Freescale make money by selling software in the first place, let alone this particular software, so they might not mind releasing it under MIT or BSD. In particular, even though an Empeg itself contains no Freescale products, Freescale might be persuaded that the more open-source embedded software is out there, the more people will buy embedded chips of all varieties, including theirs.

You should bear in mind that the actual car-player v2 and v3 releases did contain some code which Freescale either won't have, or couldn't give away if they did: particularly, the MP3 and WMA decoders. So whatever they gave us might not build out-of-the-box, nor contain all the v2 or v3 functionality if it did. But at least for MP3, there are open-source alternatives which the community could then patch in.

If they're amenable, you'll probably then need a volunteer to go through the source code (under Freescale NDA) to remove all the bits Freescale can't give out. I'd be happy to do that, if it came to it.

Peter

Well done for asking Boelle, while it may still lead to nothing, it's just a first step to who knows what!

Apologies to the old hands who've discussed this before, I was just curious, even more curious now!

Hugh

well.. i will keep everyone posted if they ever responds...

but whats the difference between the different license forms?

Much too complex to explain here. But hopefully Freescale has lawyers who know about this stuff.

Peter

damn... that was a lot of different license forms.. i was trying to find one that gave us the rights to do whatever we want with the source and that prevents anyone to make a patent based on stuff we do with the code

but i'm reading on...

been reading a bit. BSD seems the best option. No one can make money or even mention another name... like we cant write freescale anywhere without there accept..

Huh? Don't understand what you wrote there.

The BSD license allows you to reuse the code in a commercial product.

There is nothing stopping you from making money from open source code.

yeah... but from what i read you are not allowed to mention freescale without their accept

on the other hand if we ever get so crazy to make an mk3 others cant mention our name and profit on it

but i might be wrong

No. The BSD license basically insists you mention the authors of the portions of code you're using. There are no restrictions apart from that. If somebody integrates it into another product then they aren't under any obligation to release their code.

GPL licensing for the code would be better IMO.

i have to agree on that one

So... nobody wants the dashboard?

Rob

You know I want it, Rob. Unfortunately, getting it over here would be a pain.

Likewise...