The IDE isn't very fast on the SA1100 as the cycles are fairly long. The SA1110 helps a bit (hence why the Rio Central has faster IDE than the carplayer).

Given a PXA255 like I have on my desk here, I can get more like 8mbytes/sec via PIO simply due to better timing options in the chips IO block. Even more with DMA

Ethernet can be done by the SMSC chip without many problems, but there aren't "lots of" non-PCI 100mbit chips; the SMSC one was the only one I found, last time I looked.

The best solution would likely be something like the Cirrus 9312, if it ever comes out. It has (onboard) IDE-DMA, 100mbit ethernet, USB host, etc. Again, I have one of these on my desk, but it's an old rev and was very buggy (and it's already 2 years late) - it also may not drive the VFD without some hackery.

A PXA would be nice for outright speed (400 vs 200MHz of the Cirrus), and ARM9E extensions (for audio algorithms), but you then need to add ethernet & a USB host chip.

The big issues are:

- 4-channel audio out. Use a DSP or just do it all in software with 2 stereo DACs? If you go this route, what will do the FM MPX/RDS decode as well as the DSP? Going the other way, I don't know how many software changes would be required to get the latest (ie, only available) philips DSP working.

- Software support. It's likely that we'll aim for a 2.4 kernel in 3.0, to ease things like ext3, but there's still going to be far more work involved than could get done in spare time.

- Cost. Both CPUs are BGA, so "kit form" is going to be out. It's likely to be spendy.

Hugo

I can't really understand the desire for a 100TX ethernet port...sure, I can understand that when initially loading a blank player it would make a huge difference. And I can also understand that drive upgrades would be significantly faster. But for daily/weekly music uploads I can't see that alone worth the expense of a new mainboard.

Supposing that a new mainboard were to be made with all the other desired features, then that would still be wasteful - the old board which works so well would be thrown out. And there'd still be many issues such as retrofitting additional docking connectors for firewire/LCD/etc. to both the case and the sled. And if you were also replacing the display, then what remains the same? Wouldn't it make more sense to build a wholly new unit, and leave the old one alone? (Therefore having the option of selling it and recouping some cash)

I'd rather see the money spent on an ethernet-based extender that drives a 640x480 LCD touchscreen (or non-touchscreen with surrounding buttons), and also provides addtional IO support (especially RS232 serial).

you have to remove the drive - but hey, you've already removed the empeg from your car

Not to mention that you've somehow got to connect it to your PC. Products that do this tend to give you a drive bay. They're not usually capable of hot-swap, so you'll need to power-cycle your PC.

I don't know about you, but none of my PCs (including my WinXP box) have been rebooted, let alone powered down, for months. No thanks.

As I recall, we did look into it, but decided that making the drives removable from the player would make it hard to fit two of them in there.

But for daily/weekly music uploads I can't see that alone worth the expense of a new mainboard.

I'm with you there. As neat as 100baseT would be, I don't see myself needing it. Not for the level of difficulty and expense a new mainboard would require.

I agree, to be worth it, the new mainboard would have to be a complete redesign with most of the latest toys on it.

Hugo, it sounds like you've already put a lot of time into thinking about this.

please just let me know when I can order one (or 2)

Quite happy to do so, but how many people would want one?

Count me in. New displayboard or motherboard, whatever you come up with.

none of this bothers me - I'm quite happy with the way my empeg works (Although leaving computers on isn't very eco-friendly ;P ), my point really was that taking the drive out + additional software is a far easier & cheaper task than a motherboard redesign....But it's all academic as none of this is going to happen anyway!

Adrian

(Although leaving computers on isn't very eco-friendly ;P )

Only if I'm not using it. Otherwise, it's no more eco-unfriendly than simply using any device that requires power.

I keep the monitor off when I'm not sitting at it, but it's a unix machine... it's usually doing something regardless of whether I'm a foot from it, 3 floors from it, or an ocean away.

If you would like to copy mp3's directly from your linux PC to your Empeg, you can do so using mp3tofid.
But this is really only useful if you're doing a drive replacement. Getting drives in and out of your
player is way to much fuss to do on a daily basis.

Pim

yeah, I agree - but if you're uploading on a daily basis then I'd assume that you're not actually uploading a massive amount, therefore 100Mbit would be of no consequence - 100 Mbit or taking the drives out would only be of use when uploading a huge amount of data to the drives, ie Paul with his 2 80 Gb drives!

Adrian

Roger said he doesn't switch off any of his PC's, unless he's got a lot of arms he's certainly isn't using them all at the same time! (Unless they're all servers, but *why* would anyone want a windows XP server ;P)

Adrian

Roger said he doesn't switch off any of his PC's, unless he's got a lot of arms he's certainly isn't using them all at the same time! (Unless they're all servers, but *why* would anyone want a windows XP server)

The Windows XP box is my desktop. One of the Linux boxes is my firewall. The other Linux box is my fileserver.

Yet another Linux box is my webserver -- it's colocated somewhere with a fatter pipe, so I can't combine the functionality with one of the boxes at home.

So, no, I don't have that many arms and, no, I'm not using them all at once.

However, I will say this: repeated thermal stress caused by constant on/off cycles increases the risk of premature PC failure. Considering the amount of energy required to build the PC, and the amount of nasty chemicals used in the manufacturing process, I'm probably doing the environment a favour by leaving my PC's on all the time.

You have good reason to have them all on then

I don't think I've ever had a PC die, I once had the PSU in my Acorn Archimedes die and had to be replaced - half the problem with risks of failure is the MTBF rating, afaik which means nothing - it tell's people how many spare parts they should buy in order to keep something running over it's envisaged life - not really how long it is between failures - I saw an article which applied MTBF to an average fit male human, and the MTBF was worked out to be something like 34 years - which is obviosuly not true.

I think we've taken this thread slightly off course!

Adrian

I'm curious to know if you have ever considered an Intel IXP420 network processor? Like the Cirrus you mentioned, it has a some useful stuff built into the chip - 2 x 10/100 Ethernet MACs, USB 1.1, 33/66MHz PCI host, 2 x 921 Kbaud UARTs, etc. And its XScale based (266, 400, or 533MHz).
I'm not sure if there's an FPGA version though.

I think you mean BGA or QFP, FPGA is something completely different!

..while on the subject of XScales, has anyone here got the new zaurus 5600 with the XScale processor? Is it fast? What sort of stuff is it capable of doing?

Adrian

I guess I meant PGA then (Pin Grid Array), assuming BGA in the original post meant Ball Grid Array. I understood the F to mean (Flip-chip) although I'm not sure what that means.

Haven't heard of QFP before. Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with hardware terms. I should stick to what I know.

There is a BGA version of the IXP420. I use it every day in my work.

I didn't know there was an XScale Zaurus out, cool! Must go check that out. Thanks.

ahh...FPGA is Field Programmable Gate Array, you basically download softcores to them, so you could make the chip flash leds, or by the same token download a processor core to it and associated digital perpiherals - often used to test stuff before committing to ASIC (Although FPGA's run a lot slower than asics)...fpgas are quite cool technology.

Adrian

I live on the edge. I have one tiny linux box, a Corel Netwinder, that is my firewall, mail server (in/out), NFS server, SAMBA server, print server, web server, DNS host/server for several domains, remote access host (SSH, VNC, ...), DHCP server, time server (and client from a Stratum-2 outside source), etc..

All in a box that's about the same physical size as an Empeg, and which uses about 50% more power than an Empeg.

But of course I DO have a spare on the shelf, just in case.

Very power-friendly: took very little to make it, takes very little to run it, and it'll be tiny in the landfill when it finally dies.

Cheers

Something that looks like this

Quite happy to do so, but how many people would want one?

I'd buy one!!! Probably two!

As far as the mainboard goes, I'm happy with the speed and such, usb 2.0 would be nice, sure 100mb ethernet would be great. But would I prefer that over a nicer display and a few more buttons... probably not.