wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - nope, it's alive!

Posted by: chrispitude

wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - nope, it's alive! - 29/05/2008 16:47

Hi all,

I bought my empeg way back when you could still buy them directly from SonicBlue during the closeout sale. In all those years, it simply sat in my car and played tunes for me. I didn't tinker with it, and it still has the dual 30GB drives in it.

Recently, my wife asked me to empty out the empeg so we could start over and upload a mixed collection. From reading the forums, it sounded like the quickest way to start over was to run the drive builder image, then upgrade back to the 2.01 software.

First I tried installing the drive builder image with jEmplode, but that did not work. I tried regular Emplode and that seemed to be working until it failed with some sort of "Can't find pump" message (should have written it down) partway into the process. Now my empeg seems to be dead. When I connect it to AC power, I get the oscillating blue light and that is it. There is no startup or drive activity, and pressing and holding the various panel buttons does nothing.

Have I killed it? This is my first venture back into anything empeg-related for quite a long time, and I am not off to a good start.

- Chris

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 29/05/2008 17:39

How do you know the drive builder image didn't work? I'll bet it did and you just don't realize it. Try loading the 2.01 software (you didn't say that you did that) and see where you get.

Oh, and if you get back to where you see all your old music still, which I imagine will be the case, just delete it all from emplode. It'll be just as fast.

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 29/05/2008 17:53

I don't think the drive builder worked because when it hung, the empeg's display was blank and there was no drive activity. I think I know my problem - the empeg was not unplugged when I started the upgrade process.

By applying power after starting the upgrade, I was able to reload 2.01 and the player successfully restarted. All my songs were there and it was even paused in the middle of the last song it was playing, so that tells me I didn't erase the drives.

So, I tried reinstalling the drive builder image. The upgrade was successful, and I ran HyperTerminal right after it finished loading the image, and the player shows:

Code:

empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k init+ /bin/mount -n /proc
+ log 'Builder image'
+ echo 'Builder image'
Buildeshow_message("Builder image")
r image
+ echo 'POPUP 9999 Builder image'
+ DRIVE1=
+ '[' -e /proc/ide/hdb -a -e /proc/ide/hdc ']'
+ '[' -e /proc/ide/hdb ']'
+ DRIVE1=hdb
+ '[' -e /proc/ide/hdc ']'
+ /bin/mount -n -t ext2 -o ro,nocheck /dev/hda4 /drive0
+ '[' -d /drive0/fids ']'
+ log 'Drives already built'
already built' show_mes
Drives already built
+ echo 'POPUP 9999 Drives already built'
+ exec /bin/bash --login
bash-2.01#
bash-2.01#

According to the upgrade instructions at

http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Drive_Upgrade&file=index

it says:

Quote:

If the disk drive wasn't blank, the formatter may complain by saying 'disk is already built'. If this happens, you must press the Enter key in Hyperterminal before it will begin erasing the disk.

but hitting Enter just brings another shell prompt (as shown above). So, the drive builder image is installed, but I am not sure what to type to make it actually go. Just pressing Enter doesn't seem to work with this builder.

I am using the LBA48 drive builder image here:

http://rtr.ca/bigdisk/

You raise a very good question why I am doing this with the drive builder, instead of just erasing all the songs through jEmplode. The reason is that I plan to upgrade from dual 30GB drives to a single 160GB drive, so I figured this would give me an opportunity to learn what I need to do for that to happen.

Thanks for your help,

- Chris

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 29/05/2008 18:39

Hi again,

It looks like the thread here contains all the answers:

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=2&Number=308702

The first time I installed the drive builder, I used the car2-builder image and appear to have run into the same pump error mentioned in that thread. While searching for answers, I came across the builder_bigdisk_v3 builder and used that, which worked.

Also, using the commands posted in the thread, I was able to remove the fids and reboot and I now have a nice clean empeg ready for songs!

I think I feel brave enough to attempt a drive upgrade. Now it's time to find a good upgrade drive!

- Chris

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 29/05/2008 19:07

This sure isn't turning out to be easy. When I tried to drag an MP3 folder into jEmplode, I get:

Code:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to create a node modifier for a com.inzyme.table.BasicContainerTableModel@19da4fc
	at org.jempeg.nodestore.model.ContainerModifierFactory.getInstance(ContainerModifierFactory.java:55)
	at org.jempeg.manager.event.AbstractFileDropTargetListener.drop(AbstractFileDropTargetListener.java:121)
	at java.awt.dnd.DropTarget.drop(Unknown Source)
	at sun.awt.dnd.SunDropTargetContextPeer.processDropMessage(Unknown Source)
	at sun.awt.dnd.SunDropTargetContextPeer$EventDispatcher.dispatchDropEvent(Unknown Source)
	at sun.awt.dnd.SunDropTargetContextPeer$EventDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
	at sun.awt.dnd.SunDropTargetEvent.dispatch(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processDropTargetEvent(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)

- Chris

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 29/05/2008 21:14

I figured out my error above. I was dragging the MP3 folder onto the "empegcar" top level in jEmplode, which appears to not be handled gracefully in the jEmplode client. Dragging them to the "All Music" level works.

More fun stuff:

In regular emplode, attempting to apply a wendy filter to an artist results in a crash.
The latest version of jEmplode (v70) shows v69 in the titlebar.
In jEmplode, when I go to the Artist list and choose an artist name (either in the left or right pane), when I attempt to apply a wendy filter to an artist and choose "OK and Change Children" it does not actually propagate down to the songs under the artist. This makes it impossible for me to set wendy flags in bulk across many artists.

I don't appear to be able to set Wendy filters by artist in either client.

- Chris

Posted by: Roger

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 06:07

Originally Posted By: chrispitude

I don't appear to be able to set Wendy filters by artist in either client.

That's because, internally, it makes no sense. The wendy filter is applied to the individual tracks. Obviously, the client software should apply the filter to all of the tracks found with that artist, but, obviously, we forgot about that use case :-)

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 09:02

Originally Posted By: Roger

Hi Roger,

That's the part I don't understand! Clearly, someone deliberately implemented a "OK and Change Children" button, and it seems like the intent would be to - for example - modify all the songs under an artist. Strangely, if I get the properties of the Artist object, it has the settings, but it's just not propagating downward. So the wendy filters of the artists are modifiable, which is silly since you can't play an abstract artist entry - you only play songs belonging to them!

Is jEmplode still maintained, or is there going to be no easy way to mark wendy filters for ~200GB of songs once we're synced up?

I appreciate your response,

- Chris

Posted by: andy

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 09:28

Originally Posted By: chrispitude

Is jEmplode still maintained, or is there going to be no easy way to mark wendy filters for ~200GB of songs once we're synced up?

Not currently. A couple of us have gone as far as making the most recent code that we have build, but I don't think anyone has the stomach at the moment to start wading into that amount of complex Java

I'd love to go in and find the bugs that made it screw up my playlists the last couple of times I tried to use it, but I fear it would involve many weeks learning the code/empeg data structures before getting anywhere near actually finding the bug and fixing it.

Posted by: peter

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 10:46

Originally Posted By: chrispitude

it seems like the intent would be to - for example - modify all the songs under an artist

Particularly as the entire original reason that the feature was implemented, was that Wendy didn't like Carter USM...!

Peter

Posted by: peter

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 10:52

Originally Posted By: chrispitude

Have I killed it?

BTW, it's essentially impossible to permanently kill or "brick" an Empeg other than by physically or electrically destroying the hardware. (Unlike some consumer electronics which can be "bricked" by, say, unplugging the power during a firmware upgrade.) Whatever happens to the disk, it can be recovered by a builder image. Whatever happens to the flash, other than the protected boot-block, can be recovered by applying a new upgrade. And the protected boot-block cannot be overwritten without unsoldering a PCB link.

Peter

Posted by: Boelle

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 11:01

chrispitude... did you get the player working again?

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 11:06

Hi all,

Thanks for all your help. Peter, it's good to know the empeg is pretty robust. I was worried when I got it to a state where plugging it in did nothing, but fortunately it was still receptive to receiving and installing another upgrade image in that state!

And yes Boelle, thankfully it is up and running and happy again. My wife is driving to work this very moment with a new batch of tunes.

The 250GB drive should be here early next week, then the real fun begins. This was just a practice run with the existing 30GB drives.

I suspect I will be forced to choose each artist, then apply the wendy filters to all songs in the right pane for that artist. This will require me to apply the wendy filters artist-by-artist instead of just ctrl-selecting a bunch of top-level artists at once, but that's not too bad.

I wish I knew why the regular emplode client crashed when applying wendy filters. Who knows, maybe it works in that client (for other folks!).

I appreciate everyone's help. It's nice to be back!

- Chris

Posted by: Boelle

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 11:11

i just enable import of winamp playlist files (.mu3) and drop them in emplode.... and it takes care of makeing playlists and transfering the tunes

Posted by: Roger

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 11:24

Originally Posted By: chrispitude

I wish I knew why the regular emplode client crashed when applying wendy filters.

Because the code's a bit flakey in some areas, basically. (I'm allowed to say that: I'm responsible for the bulk of it). I think the real reason that Wendy flags aren't implemented particularly well is because Hugo had broken up with Wendy by the time we got around to implementing them, so it wasn't quite as important

Small note: emplode 2.00 is more stable than emplode 2.10. You'll only need emplode 2.10 if you're dealing with foreign language (non-Latin1) tags or Ogg Vorbis or FLAC.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 12:55

Can you try searching for the artist in emplode's search, selecting all of the tracks that show up, and apply the wendy filter to them that way? (I haven't tried this; it's just a guess.)

Posted by: Roger

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 13:36

Originally Posted By: wfaulk

Can you try searching for the artist in emplode's search, selecting all of the tracks that show up, and apply the wendy filter to them that way? (I haven't tried this; it's just a guess.)

In emplode, that ought to work. It might not be particularly performant, though.

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 15:12

Hi everyone,

I will try some of the suggestions and report back! The empeg is with my wife at work.

- Chris

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 15:24

Actually, I have another question for you kind folks.

Soon I'll be upgrading from two 30GB drives to a single 250GB drive. Is there any way to copy or remember the complete list of tracks in Emplode or jEmplode, so that I can then push all those new tracks to the new drive? I am not looking to physically back up and restore the tracks from the old 30GB drives to the new 250GB drive; I don't need to copy them back from the empeg since I already have them on local storage. I'm just wondering if there's a way to import the track list from my old configuration into the new configuration, then synchronize with that.

The FAQ contains this entry entitled "Can I back up the player's playlists and music files?" but this is more along the lines of actual physical backup of the tracks on the unit. I guess I am looking more towards exporting/importing the playlist/track configuration.

Boy I forgot how far hard drive technology has come. Those old 30GB drives sound like jet turbines when they spin up.

Thanks all!

- Chris

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 15:52

It's going to be far easier to copy the whole of both fids directories to the new drive than anything else. Yeah, it'll take a while for the music to be copied, but you'd have to upload that music anyway.

The fastest way would be to hook the drives up to a Linux computer and copy the files on it, since you'll get better IDE performance with a real desktop than with the empeg.

But if you want to do it all in the empeg, take both drives out and install the new drive. Load the firmware onto the new drive. Reattach one of the old drives as a slave drive. Copy all of the fids directory from the old drive to the new drive. Take that old drive out and put the other old drive in. Copy all of its fids to the new drive. Take that drive out. Sync with emplode.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 15:59

Quote:

Soon I'll be upgrading from two 30GB drives to a single 250GB drive. (...) I can then push all those new tracks to the new drive?

There are specific instructions in the Drive Upgrade Guide for doing this. They are down near the end of the guide, section titled "Step 7: Copying files (special circumstances only)". They include detailed command line input instrunctions. In short, you simply copy the entire contents of the FIDS folder from each of the 30gb drives to the single FIDS folder on the single 250gb drive.

In theory, the fid numbers should not overlap.

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 16:33

Oh, awesome! I did see that in the upgrade guide. I didn't know the FIDs is just the song information - I thought they were the song MP3 files themselves, and I wanted to avoid transferring all that back, then forth. Thank you Tony! Your FAQ and the guides are invaluable, and greatly appreciated.

- Chris

Posted by: tfabris

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 16:38

The FIDs are both the song information, AND the MP3 files. It is the source for all song database information including the playlist trees and what is in them. The entire details are here.

Edit: Let me be clear about this: You can't easily transfer the song information without also transferring the MP3 files, too. Once that stuff is on the player, the things are rather carefully intertwined and hard to separate. So you're in for a long wait no matter what you do. The difference here is that the wait is only to copy them in one direction (from the old hard disk to the new hard disk, as opposed to back to the PC then back onto the player).

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 18:22

Thanks for the clarification. I think I am after more of an export/import or backup/restore of the song list in Emplode or jEmplode. The capability doesn't exist, so I think I'll just start from scratch and choose new stuff once the 250GB drive is installed. I guess I'll need to do that anyway since I'll have more room to work with, and my music standards will be lower.

- Chris

Posted by: mlord

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 18:29

Originally Posted By: chrispitude

Thanks for the clarification. I think I am after more of an export/import or backup/restore of the song list in Emplode or jEmplode.

You can backup your player to a PC from JEmplode, with each playlist put into its own directory ("folder") on your PC, with tracks inside of it, and human-readable file names.

So the music need not be lost. But any fancy custom playlists and the like will not be backed up exactly as you might want them to be.

Still, it is a pretty good method.

Cheers

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 18:30

So you want to keep the existing playlists, but not the music that goes along with them. Is there a word for metadata without data?

Maybe I don't understand what you're getting at, but this doesn't seem to make any sense. A list of music would seem to be useless without the music to go with it, at least on a device whose whole purpose is to play music.

I suppose this could make sense if the music files you have on your computer are of a better quality than what you currently have on your empeg's drives. But there's not really any way to automatically associate the track metadata on the empeg with files on your computer.

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 20:03

Hi Bitt,

Basically it comes down to this. I already have copies of all the MP3s locally - they're what jEmplode pushes to the empeg for each song. What I want is to simply take the state of a player - all its songs, playlists, and wendy filters - and save it to a file. Then I'd like to be able to apply that set of data to a new empeg, or to my same empeg after upgrading it.

Another way to think about it. Let's say you start with a fresh empty empeg. You start jEmplode and begin dragging a whole bunch of files into it, and you define a bunch of filters. At that point, jEmplode has all the data and the empeg has nothing (yet). I just want to be able to save that state out of jEmplode, so if I were to sync to another empeg (or my freshly upgraded empeg), I don't have to tell it all of the same things again. Transferring all the fids back to the PC only to transfer them back to the empeg is doing twice the work that's needed, since I already have everything locally. Plus, I don't know if copying the fids will copy things like wendy filters too.

It's like exporting your browser bookmarks before you upgrade your operating system so you can reload them. I just want to restore the state of what jEmplode wants to push back onto the empeg.

If jEmplode had an import/export capability, that would be perfect! I'd export the list of crap that's on my old unit, upgrade it, run jEmplode and connect to the new unit, load that file, and hit Synchronize.

- Chris

Posted by: tfabris

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - 30/05/2008 20:31

Jemplode actually kinda does this already. Edit copy a playlist (or an entire playlist tree) in Jemplode, open a new window connected to another player, edit paste, it works. It would copy over an MP3 file if necessary, but if only playlist changes were needed, it would only change the playlists. It uses the RID feature to calculate duplicates, and off it goes. Magic.

Only problem is, Mike never optimized or fully debugged that bit, and it chokes on extremely large lists. Also, for players where there weren't any precalculated RIDs, you needed to generate them.

There were also some command line tools to do this, but they were tricky and only worked if the moon was in the right phase.

I was trying to do this sort of thing to keep my Rio Central and my Empeg Car in synch. It was very iffy. Now I just keep them equally updated by hand, the old fashioned way.

Anyway, for the purpose of transferring a dual-30 player to a single-250 player, the drive copying as described in the Disk Upgrade Guide is faster and more straightforward, and nothing has to touch the local PC, it all happens inside the player. The situation you describe where you want to synch up different players, that's a different issue.

Posted by: chrispitude

Re: wanted to erase it, but I think I killed it - nope, it's alive! - 08/06/2008 16:45

I just wanted to let everyone know that I successfully upgraded my dual 30GB drive to a single 250GB drive. I couldn't have done it without the excellent drive upgrade document (thank Tony!) and the helpfulness of all forum members here. My wife is very excited (as the M3 is her daily driver) and is building her playlist right now!

- Chris