And I definitely see an inverse correlation between how many megabytes emplode will send to the empeg and how many minutes my computer (the PC, not the empeg) has been running.

You've suggested in the past that this correlation indicated a temperature problem. I just wanted to make sure you understood that it could still be a software problem. Some software programs can eat memory or resources when left running, and a PC that is perfectly stable when booted can slowly become increasingly unstable as some piece of software slowly eats up a resource. This doesn't have to be a foreground application: It can be a tray icon or even something that runs invisibly in the background.

Just out of curiosity, what tray apps are you running? You wouldn't happen to be running VShield or a similar product would you? I've seen those kinds of apps interfere quite seriously with other things before. (Personally, I manually scan every strange file/disk instead of relying on something like VShield.)

___________
Tony Fabris

I just wanted to make sure you understood that it could still be a software problem. Some software programs can eat memory or resources when left running, and a PC that is perfectly stable when booted can slowly become increasingly unstable as some piece of software slowly eats up a resource.

Nice call, Tony, but no cigar. Freshly booted or not, emplode still hangs when the computer is warm, will load at least 7 CDs worth when the computer is cold.

what tray apps are you running?

Nothing too fancy... the windows task scheduler; something that allows me to change my screen resolution; something that allows me to change volume settings; something for my Matrox video card to change video properties; something to change my mouse properties; a little tsr called cliptrak from PC magazine that stores clipboard entries for later retrieval; Disc Detector; Real Player; modem connection; ICQ; time of day. Nothing too heavy duty there, and I have tried it with every one of them turned off that I could and still had lockups.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Hmmm. The Rio600 has had USB transfer problems with some PCs - I seem to remember K6 machines had something to do with it. They released a software patch for the unit which helped this; I wonder what it was. Would be useful to know!

Hugo

I've been running Emplode on Win98SE and Windows 2000 Pro with no problems uploading upto 4Gb of data at any one time to the EMPEG (It's now full). I upload using Ethernet. If you're using USB and have an AMD processor you may experience problems, we have had issues with USB devices on AMD based PC's in the past. The resolution, at least for the PC's we had was to do a BIOS upgrade. It turned out that their was a problem with the USB's data buffers.



-------------
MK II, (Blue but should be Amber) SN: 118

My desktop machine has the latest BIOS, I'm not sure about my Sony Vaio laptop, but I didn't find a BIOS upgrade on their web site. I transfer gigabytes of data all the time using other pieces of hardware and software with no problem.

Ok, Well I'm not sure this has anything to do with your problem but I thought I would tell you about this just in case. I was having trouble with emplode locking up at the very end of a sync (on stage 10..) really after the sync when it is trying to get the new info from Empeg. What I did was hooked up both Serial and USB and did a sync via USB. It didn't happen every time but sometimes the player would crash after a sync and go to a shell (on the developer version, not sure about consumer).. I could then issue commands via the serial and execute player again and emplode would complete without errors and not locking up.
So If you are having this same problem it may appear that emplode has locked up when in reality it is waiting for a crashed player to respond. Perhaps the empeg could detect this and reexecute the player when it crashes.

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

...locking up at the very end of a sync (on stage 10..)

No, not the same thing. It makes it part way through the list of tracks and locks up, usually in the middle of a track. Have to ctrl-alt-del to clear emplode, then reboot the computer before emplode will reload.

The problem is almost certainly in the PC, not the empeg, and may be an incompatibility between emplode and my particular hardware configuration.

If my PC is cold (just turned on after being powered down for a few hours) emplode will run just fine. When it is warm, about half a CD's worth of music is the most that emplode will download.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

The problem is almost certainly in the PC, not the empeg, and may be an incompatibility between emplode and my particular hardware configuration.

I'm not so sure the problem is on the PC. When I watched it, it did look like the Empeg just decides to reboot half way through, Emplode doesn't have any idea that's what happened and freezes waiting for Empeg to respond.

I'm willing to give the suggestion a try, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to convince the Empeg to continue through the shell prompt.

If the empeg is mounted read/write, and a it doesn't receive any commands for a certain period of time, it will remount read-only and reboot. This is simply a self-protection device for the empeg's filesystems. If the PC's USB stack is upset and no data is getting through, the empeg will do this.

Hugo

I have had the same problems with my Mk 2 player from day one - using both USB and ethernet. I am running Win98SE, on an ABIT P3 500 (real Intel), consumer image 1.0. I can often get away with syncing a single album (though not always) but as soon as I load up 2-3.. I get sync issues. I have also had the system subsequently lockup while playing (~20 times).

I've had the unit a month... and it's been a very frustrating month. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. Maybe we can get a fix soon.

Mike

Please, if you have problems, mail [email protected] with as much detail as possible. I know 1.01 has some sync improvements, but we need as much info as we can get to nail down problems.

Thanks,
Hugo

I did send this info to [email protected] and didn't receive an acknowledgement that it had been received and wasn't asked for more detail. Don't know if I should have emailed "support" as well..

I have the same problem that you have, running USB on a Compaq 233. Here's something that worked for me: set up an ethernet connection. Like you I couldn't upload more then one album in one sync. After setting up an ethernet connection like someone suggested elsewhere on this board I did 2 subsequent uploades of 4-8 albums without any problems.

Hendrik
#080000456
18Gb green

Here's something that worked for me: set up an ethernet connection. Like you I couldn't upload more then one album in one sync. After setting up an ethernet connection like someone suggested elsewhere on this board I did 2 subsequent uploades of 4-8 albums without any problems.

Do you mean:

a) Use the ethernet cable to perform your synchs?
or
b) Install a dummy TCP/IP driver into the network control panel, even if you don't have an ethernet card?

If you mean (a), that's not an option for everyone because it involves spending money on an ethernet card.

If you mean (b), did you report that to the Empeg guys? If that worked, it would mean that there's a bug in Emplode that can be easily fixed if they had that information to diagnose it with.

___________
Tony Fabris

Here's something that worked for me: set up an ethernet connection.

Yeah, I've already reached that conclusion. I have officially given up USB as a viable emplode resource as of tonight. Tomorrow I see if I can get a network running on my PC.

If you mean (a), that's not an option for everyone because it involves spending money on an ethernet card.

It's not the money, it's the resources. My PC is pretty heavily configured, right now a quick count shows an even dozen cables coming out of the back of it, and whether I still have a PCI slot and an IRQ available is anybody's guess.

Of course, by the time I finish bugging Tony about how to set up the TCP/IP addresses or whatever it is I have to do to make a network he'll probably move to another state and change his email address...

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Yeah, I've already reached that conclusion. I have officially given up USB as a viable emplode resource as of tonight. Tomorrow I see if I can get a network running on my PC.

Before you panic and do that (you shouldn't have to do it, USB should be a viable option for everyone), have you tried flashing a more recent BIOS into the motherboard of the troublesome machine?

It could be something that simple. I've heard of USB troubles being solved by BIOS upgrades.

___________
Tony Fabris

have you tried flashing a more recent BIOS into the motherboard of the troublesome machine?

An excellent idea, Tony. I'll look into that.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I'm sorry, I should have expressed myself a bit clearer here.

I meant:

a) Use the ethernet cable to perform your synchs "after installing a nic into my computer"

I've installed a 3com nic in my computer and got a crosscable to connect it to Empeg. I've had a look at earlier questions about setting up an ethernet connection and that worked fine for me.
I agree with the statement that USB should work, but for some reason it doesn't on my computer (I think the problem is hardware related, I've had USB problems before with an USB ISDN adaptor, and yes, I've got the latest bios).

Anyway, the connection to Empeg is stable now, and that's what counts!

Hendrik
#080000456
18Gb green

I have the problem with USB, ethernet, and serial. I am *anxiously* awaiting the next empeg s/w release to see if it helps. In the next couple of days I'll probably try syncing via my work laptop to see if the problem is machine-dependent in my case.

Mike

I have the problem with USB, ethernet, and serial.

What exactly are your symptoms? Perhaps it's some other, known bug?

If you have a null-modem cable, can you tell us what the player says at boot time with Hyperterminal? (See the "FAQ" Section of this BBS for instructions on how to do that.)

___________
Tony Fabris

Perhaps the empeg could detect this and reexecute the player when it crashes.

It does. The only time it doesn't is if you've previously manually quit to a shell prompt in that session.

This behaviour is useful when debugging since a constantly crashing player doesn't scroll loads of stuff up the screen but works in the general user case since they won't be quitting the player.

If the player is crashing and producing a trace-back please send it to us since we can hopefully decipher it and fathom out why.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Interesting tidbit of experience that I will share; Uploading 4Gb of songs that I had DL of the net (I own the original of all the copyrighted material of course) yielded 9 sync problems. Uploading 4Gb of songs that I had ripped myself - 0 sync problems!

I only synced them separately because they were in different directory structures. Same drive, same computer, same usb connection.

Differences between sync batches are; My ripped files are all vbr (normal/high), the DL'd files are various bit rates. All my ripped files have consistent tags, who knows what's on the ones I DL'd. some Dl'd songs may be incomplete. What else?

I will try it again to see if the results are the same. But not for a couple days - I was almost in tears ;-) trying to get the first batch in...I would like to enjoy a few songs before I delete and resync.


-Doug
(Mk2-12G-Blue)

I wouldn't put in too much effort testing release 1.0 - in house we're already seven builds ahead of that. Release 1.01 is now imminent, with a LOT of bug fixes.

Rob

Good point. Thanks Rob.



-Doug
(Mk2-12G-Blue)

Does this seem to be a problem with emplode or more likely a problem with my system?

Give some big congratulations to Hugo!

He worked over the USB drivers in the 1.01 pre-release beta of emplode, and I just finished a 4.1 gigabyte test download (duplicating all the music in my "classical" genre -- now I get to go in and delete it all!) and it ran without a hitch. This is about 20 times larger download than I had ever successfully run before.

The 1.01 emplode and player software should be available for general distribution in the next day or so, so morrisdl, hendrik, CharlieP, Ezekiel, bluelobster, phaigh, mtempsch and all the others who had the problem and participated in this thread -- it looks like the guys@empeg came through for us once again.

Was there ever any doubt?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Give some big congratulations to Hugo!

Seconded. Bravo to Mike, Hugo, Roger, John, Peter, and the rest of the Empeg team for a great 1.01 release. As I said on the Alpha team mailing list, that's one heck of a release-notes file.

___________
Tony Fabris

Just got back from a week in SFO and this is a nice suprise. Tomorrow night I'll give it a shot and let people know how it goes. I'll try both usb & ethernet (as I seem to have trouble with both) and post my results. I also received the modified harness(es) today for the thump, which I'll probably get around to later on this week. I have two extra, anybody need one? Now if I can only get them to send me two more empeg's n/c... ;-)

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

Well the first shot at ethernet sync did the same old trick: do one song then fail at stage five with a 0xfffffffffffff error. The unit then has to undergo a disk integrity check (which it is currently doing). I'll check USB after dinner. The 1.01 update applied fine so I have that going for me, which is nice.
More posting later.

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

I took the opportunity to go over my ID3 tags on my main collection. I'll be loading about 1900 songs up via USB tonight (as soon as it finishes deleting the older copies first). I'll post with results tomorrow night.

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

USB 7.86GB upload = No Problem. Late for work.

-Z

just say you weren't paying much attention...