Hi,

Guess what? The problem returned recently - same issues. Symptoms...

1) It took a long time to rebuild the database on power-plug being applied. Does the same thing every time.

2) With front panel power-on after database rebuild, it has normal response, played fine, for hours, no memory errors

3) When Emplode is used to add/delete songs, couldn't get past rebuilding the database, Emplode times out (because the database is taking too long to "normally" build), core dumps and dies.

4) jEmplode does a similar thing.

5) Serial String shows that it can't find the tags.

6) FSCK can't fix it. Last FSCK rendered the 2nd drive useless after performing it. The drive was not visible afterwards.


Tried all of the fixes, couldn't make it work. The last FSCK I ran tried to fix the boot partition (remember that the -fay answers "yes" to all of the questions - might want to add a caution in the FAQ), and it totally hosed the second drive. There were lots of file type and structure errors that it automatically "fixed" for me - every inodes was fixed, seems like ALL of them. Probably killed the sector map, drive was unusable. Time to rebuild...

Since it looked like it was a problem with the file system reserve_cache again (although, I didn't see any nomem xxxx errors during playing it), and I couldn't get into Emplode to fix the config.ini, I gave up and thought I would try more reserve_cache next time.


Used the latest V508 big disk v6 builder and new v508 v2.01 player compatible software and rebuilt the drives. It is sure slick to be able to build and load new disks compared to earlier days - thanks Mark.

I am reloading the music database again. I am doing it in 25GB chunks and it is of course taking a while to do that. It will take (DAYS) to reload the 460GB+ database. I left the player cover off and allow about 1 hour of cool-down time for both my PC system and the Empeg between 25GB loads. The room temperature is around 70 degrees F. and the drives are barely warm during the load. I could probe them and log temperature, but they are running quite cool this way.

This time I will create a master set of drives.

I did adjust the Reserve_Cache to 18 in config.ini to see if that was the problem.



Still want to pursue SATA drives (both laptop for the cars and desktop for the home units). I know there is a lot of difference for spin-up and access time for the desktop drives. If I can get big enough laptop drives, I will use them. A few questions...

1) Does anyone know about the new Samsung SpinPoint MT2 1TB laptop SATA drive $99.00 USD? I thought I might start with one of those. Samsung drives in particular? I have always favored Western Digital Drives since I lost a 750GB to the dreaded firmware bug. Lost a lot of music database, good thing I had backed up onto my simulation system. Still like to recover the drive contents, does their firmware fix actually fix a drive that isn't recognized by DOS?

2)I read somewhere that the PATA to SATA adapters only address up to 500GB, is that true? If so, are there others available that exceed that limit?

3) Is the Empeg going to handle the 1TB file system? Will I need additional EDO RAM beyond 16MB to manage it? I do have an additional 32 MB I could install. Researched additional older and modern memory chips, not very feasible since that pin-out pretty much topped out at 4M x 16. The next bump in size included a larger package size and pin-out change. The 54 pin package wasn't very compatible with the 50 pin TSOP in the Empeg. Although, I'm not really satisfied yet.


Rory, weren't you trying out the SATA approach with a WD 250GB SATA drive? If so, how did that all turn out?

I hope you all had a great Holiday. Happy New Year (in an hour and 6 minutes here), and a prosperous, kinder 2011 to you all.

Thanks,

Ross