Hi Mark,
I'm glad to see that someone is as enthousiastic as I was when I first fot my hands on the empeg, and a decent kernel-hacker also...
I haven't tried your hacks yet, but I'm certainly going to install it later.
I haven't read the BBS for two weeks and there are about 250 unread messages!!!

What we really need now is someone to hack the existing userland
stuff (displayserver on/off, alternate IR codes for third party remotes,
Emptris (tetris clone), etc.. such that they can plug into the new
(yet to be coded by me) interface.

Well, I think I wrote most of that stuff, so count me in for trying to adapt the code to the new interface...

Then we get rid of the clunky boot menu workarounds, and have all
our NEAT STUFF tied directly into our "player extensions" menu,
accessible anytime -- even when the player is running.

I'm glad we can now stop adjusting the boot-sequence; I already skipped this in the ds2 install, but this is way nicer than stopping the player before doing stuff. Though I would like a way to totally stop the player app, for userapps that are very memory-hungry ( the GPS project? ).

A Really Neat Hack would be if someone implemented a VT that uses
this "hijack" interface (my name for it) to allow login ON the front panel.
Maybe not too useful, but I'd use it!

I did something similar; It used a 200 lines x 80 char buffer, which could be scrolled with the rotary and the front-buttons. I don't think I published it, bit I showed it at the first empeg-meet in Amersfoort; there's a photograph of my empeg showing ps-output on Rob Schofield's photo-site ( Rpb, haven't you submitted your album to riocar dot org yet? )
I even fooled around with an IR-keyboard for a while, but couldn't get it to work, so I left it for later.
I'll try to see if I can find the code for that, but I think a rewrite ( kernel device ) would be much cooler. It would be cool to switch through consoles like standard linux with ALT-F1-F6, but then with remote presses or something...
Anyway, I'm gonna install this stuff now, let you know later...

Frank van Gestel