empeg history @ solid state startups

I was slightly volunteered to give the next talk at Solid State Startups, a meetup group talking about HW startups... so on November 15th at 7pm I'll be at Hacker Dojo talking about empeg.

http://www.meetup.com/Solid-State-Startups/?gj=ej4&a=ti1_lm1

If any empeggers want to come and bring their empegs, that'd be great... my lone mk2 will be there but I'm sure there will be lots of inquisitive people. You don't need to join the Dojo to come to talks, and there's always a possibility of beer afterwards - in my case, I think I'll have a beer before given my fondness for public speaking :|

Sounds good! I'll put you on my calendar.

Hi,

Do you want to borrow a few Empegs for display?

Ross

It would be crushing to learn that Hugo no longer owned an Empeg.

I definitely own about 10 empegs (in various states including some of the original protos) but most of them are in the attic in Cambridge vs with me here. Additional empegs in a demo-type setup would be great as I'm sure there will be curious attendees who want to play with one before/after/during the talk

(and empeg owners who would like to demonstrate how ahead of the curve they were back then, and show how the queue management is STILL better than most mp3 players today!)

Better than most, as if there is one that is even close.

Don't forget to fetch the Chapter 11 sign out of storage...

Peter

As sad as it is that the empeg didn't live on in continued development, it's also quite sad that the iPod/iPhone software team at Apple didn't learn how to make a half-decent music player while Hugo was on site.

Hugo, drop a hint about your current startup - if it's car audio related at all, I'll skip any further thoughts about sticking a Squeezebox server in my car piping through an iOS device for playback.

Hi,

How many would you like? PM a quantity and an address to ship to.

I still have 12 after giving one away to a friend, that I have been using for regression testing. I could send Mk2 and Mk2a's, no Mk1's.

I can put in some older drives (12GB, 30GB, etc) if you want. I can even include a 500GB (2 each 250 GB drives) to show the .mp3 and .wav storage capability of a USER GROUP SUPPORTED, 2000 era player if you like.

Still haven't been successful integrating SATA drives yet (hardware, software, spare time issues), can't give you that yet. Would have been nice to send my 1TB SATA Laptop drive or a couple of 500GB drives in a player to you. The latest problem was with an Addonics PATA-to-SATA Adapter that use the Marvell chip. The first one allowed me to Pump the disk, load good player software, but then steps all over the Ethernet - won't even show the IEEE address in "About". Surprised me too. The second one was DOA this week. Done with Addonics - support said essentially "I don't know".

I'd be happy to send you some players.

Ross

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Does this group record video of the presentations they host?
I'm sure many would enjoy your talk after the fact.
Or- even during, if they do a live feed.

Hmmm, I've no idea where that got to. I have a feeling it's in Cambridge

Thanks for the offer, but I think I can likely rustle up maybe 3 players total with local people and that should be good for the demo and playing with... if the patent case is done by then I'll even get my mk1 back!

Hmm, I thought ethernet was on the 3v side of the PIO buffers, so it not working with a type of drive is also surprising to me!

I'm afraid it's not audio related.

However, I confidently predict that many of you will really, really want the product when it comes out, and I look forward to seeing you all on the unofficial [insert startup name here] BBS for discussions about a product in active development (again)

I've seen them recording them before, but I've never seen the output anywhere. I'll ask... they have 100mbit symmetric in the dojo so a live stream is very possible!

ok, at least tell us when you're going to tell us, Hugo!

Is it video related? You don't have to give any more details than a yes or no.

Nope, not video related either. All will become clear in the first half of next year...

Hi,

Empeg Players
--------------
Sure, if you need some just let me know.


Ethernet thing with the Addonics PATA-to-SATA Converter
-------------------------------------------------------
I think it is an address space thing. They probably do some sloppy ADRxxxx kind of decode or something.

Is there a I/O amd memory map of the system somewhere? Is the location of the Ethernet stuff even located near the PATA location even with "don't care's" in the address decodes? I don't see how it could have access to another I/O port or mapped area since I thought I had heard that the player doesn't do DMA. It's not a big deal, I'll just move on to the next controller.


Presentation
-------------
Good luck, and have fun with it. Isn't that why we do all of this stuff anyway? I'm sure they will be interested in what you have to say. I would imagine that the business model for start-ups might be different from when the EMPEG was developed. Much more caution and greed from principle investors these days.

Ross

Yeah, but the first half of next year isn't now.

Is it kittens with laser beams for eyes ? It is ?

Pew! Pew!

Photoshop!

Say it isn't true

There's no address space overlap *at all* between the IDE and other devices. IDE has two chip selects and 3 address lines. The decodes to access other memory mapped peripherals use higher order address lines that don't go to the IDE connectors.

Even if the converter was pulling on data lines when it wasn't selected, I'm not sure it should affect ethernet (though it may affect the 4321, as I remember that could have been a 5v device).

The player doesn't do DMA, no. PIO only. The SA1100 had no external DMA abilities.

Hrm.

The IDE port, CS4321, and 91C96 are all on the 5V buffered side of the bus. BD0-BD8 (buffered 5V data) go to all three devices, and BD8-BD15 go to both the IDE and ethernet controller. BA0 and BA1 (buffered 5V address lines) are in common with all three devices, and BA2 goes to both the ethernet and IDE port.

5V versions of the read and write strobes are common to all three devices. They all have independent select lines.

If the converter was holding any of the above lines in the wrong state, it could well adversely affect the ethernet controller. If the CS4321 is working correctly, but the ethernet isn't, the obvious problem area would be either the top 8 bits of the data bus or BA2.

pca

Thanks, that's what I thought.

The curious thing was that it preped the disk correctly and installed the player software correctly.

When I used the player About function from the front panel buttons, there was no information about the user (it said there was no user), and all of the Ethernet information was blank, like it had stepped on where the information was stored on the player somewhere? Memory thing again?

Ross

The IDE port has three address lines giving 8 16 bit registers directly addressable. Not all of them are decoded, there are some holes. I can't remember off the top of my head which ones, but I exploited that fact ten years ago to produce what was effectively an IDE-connected VGA card for the empeg, which could be connected to the IDE bus without interfering with the drives

Now, it may be that the problem is essentially that the converter is nobbling one or more address lines that don't affect the IDE port, being a non-decoded/non-used location, but the same lines mapped into the ethernet address space prevent it from working correctly. As I remember the ethernet controller uses a lot of registers, and it would only take one to screw it up completely.

Also, I very vaguely seem to recall that some of the IDE operations are 8 bit only, although I may be misremembering that. So again, if the higher data bits had an issue that might not affect the IDE to the point of killing it completely, although this seems much more unlikely to me.

pca

Hi,

IDE to VGA inteface, that's a new one, haven't heard about that one before. I used to integrate SVGA controllers onto X-Bus, EISA and VESA-local motherboards in a past lifetime. One actually made it into PC Magazine when they reviewed the first P5 processors a very long time ago. They liked it - it was an ATI Mach-32 VESA Local Bus based design. I also helped ATI debug the chip as well.

They didn't like the internal custom air scoop and fan that the Mechanicals shoe-horned in to cool the 5V 60/66 MHz Intel P5 processor. That chip ran V E R Y H O T. That was before 3.3V changed the world and we could all progress.

I'm not going to play with this Addonics converter much more. I think you probably have the right answer. I don't have schematics of the player so I had no idea of the mapping. I could have pulled out my logic analyzer (HP16500), but without a schematic, it would have been futile.

It's possible that the other converter (JMicron Chip based), may be doing the same thing just in a less obnoxious way. Although, I can FTP a crap-load of FIDS to it before it croaks.

I'm about ready to give up on interfacing SATA drives to the EMPEG.

Thanks for the explanation.

Ross

I can send you a schematic PDF if that will help...

pca

Hi,

I'd love to have one.

Thanks,

Ross

The way we used IDE it used all 16 databits to get anything to/from the disk.

All 3 address bits are used for the bottom CS (sector count, LBA address, etc). The top CS only uses the top addresses for the status register, but you still need all 3 address bits intact otherwise that won't work either as it's fully decoded in the drive. Nothing from ethernet lives in these holes.

The only way I can see anything bad happening here is if the converter is pulling on address or databits when both IDE CS lines are inactive. That *would* cause problems.

...but one sanity check first. Are you sure that you loaded the mk2 disk image? Got a boot spew? That might give more clues.

... only one of which is actually 16-bits (the "data" register).

Hi,

Yes, the boot was correct. The partitions were all created correctly. I was even able to fix the Tags files through a commanded database build. Which almost always doesn't create the Tags files (the only one that is created in the /empeg/var directory is the config.ini file) for large disks (both PATA and SATA).

It was the same as if I had created a set of 250GB PATA disks or a SATA disk (1TB drive with the other converter that nearly works).

Thanks,

Ross

+1

Hi,

I guess the above statement is to say that you are tired of the thread. Correct?

Ross

Quick note on the empeg. On a recent episode of This Week in Tech, Leo Laporte brought out an empeg during the show to talk about it. He got a key fact about it wrong (that it needed a hard drive in the trunk - what was that competitor he's thinking of?), but it was great to see the old empeg get some more time in the sun.

He keeps it in his little computer museum, and it's actually one of my two stereos, that I gave to him on my trip to SF last year

Phat Box. Kenwood Music Keg.

PhatNoise PhatBox / Kenwood Music Keg

You just missed it by 13 seconds Rob. 13 seconds.

Ah yes, the PhatBox. Boooo

I do love that they have a 128MB USB stick MP3 player for sale on their site. Too bad they're sold out, because I'd really have liked to pay $79 for it.

If you saw my other thread you can see where I'm going next. A DHCP WiFi server feeding an iOS device running a Squeezebox app. It doesn't have to go in the trunk though.

The Neo mp3 could be fitted anywhere you've found enough space for it in your car, but most of the times this was also in the trunk.

Just the opposite!

I love how the threads on this board can detour wildly into hardcore technia and then take another swerve in other directions, too.
This thread in particular is an excellent example. Having said that, though, I've probably just killed it. Hope not.

I thought Ross was making a pun, because the kitten was sleeping.
And Tony +1'd it, because it's a kitten.

haha- Yah, I realize it could be taken that way, but didn't want to leave it to chance! Also, I never thought of the kitten as actually sleeping. I guess I have always been taken along with the implied meaning in that lolcat.

Hi,

I thought it was a very creative image.

Sometimes, I go too much into the details. When tha happens, just yank on my colar and tell me to "sit" in a stern voice.

That should work.

Ross

No, I lurve the thread too! :-)

You should learn more about this popular 'lolcat' meme that the kids are doing these days.

Meh. It's important to record details, particularly when the only thing left supporting a product is the community (and a small one, at that).

I shall.

Thanks,

Ross

Well done, Hugo. I enjoyed the talk very much.
Interesting venue.

I think they film them, so when it's up I'll post the link (if anyone else really needs to get to sleep that badly ).

Thanks for coming Stu, and bringing the empeg bits! The venue is kinda interesting, I was working from there for a couple of months and it's very social if you want it to be... it's a bit hard for hardware development though because you can't leave anything set up overnight.