There doesn't seem to be much support in our excellent FAQ to guide poor Linux users through the hard drive upgrade process. I've successfully performed a drive upgrade in the past using Windows, but now I only have a Linux box and I keep running into problems.

First off, I'm using minicom, as suggested, to monitor the empeg's serial output. However, it's not working very well at all. I've set it up for the correct baud rate, parity etc. but upon the rebooting empeg I only receive a tiny, randomly timed, amount of output from the empeg. Typically just something like "let the pegui", or "empeg-ca", etc. and there's now way of accessing the player software. Any ideas what's happening here?

When it comes to upgrading the player's flash with the drive builder firmware (and then later the 2.0 firmware) can I use Jemplode? I remember in the past that serial connections in Jemplode were near on impossible to get working, but can I perform the upgrade over the ethernet connection? If not, then is emptool the only way to go? And is there any advice on how to safely use emptool with respect to a drive upgrade?

Thanks for your help,
Ross