Yes, you sure need a developer's image to get access to a shell to issue commands.
The developer image only allows access to a shell-prompt; It doesn't contain any user-applications at all (except for the empeg player executable of course).
To have access to a comfortable unix-environment you should install a base debian distribution on your empeg. I don't know where I got it from, but I have copied my file to my webserver and you can find it
here.
This is the basic debian potato distribution. After installing this you can download seperate packages from ftp.debian.org and start installing using the dpkg command.
A basic checklist for converting your empeg to a full-featured linux-machine :
1) connect your empeg through serial to your PC
2) install the 1.01 developer's image using emptool
3) start hyperterm and reboot your empeg; See the boot messages
4) After booting press 'q' a couple of time to get to a prompt
5) type the following commands to install the debian file
# rw
# rwm
# cd /drive0
# mkdir local
# mkdir local/root
# cd local/
Now use hyperterm's 'send file' option to copy the debian file to the empeg
I don't know if gzip is installed in the developer's image; if it isn't you should use winzip to extract the tar file from the .gz file and send the tar file
# ls -l
this should show the copied debian-file
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 9651112 Jan 2 17:09 debian-image.990822.tar.gz
now unzip and unpack the tar file
# gzip -d *.gz # (if gzip is available)
# cd root
# tar xvf ../*.tar
This will install all files in the tar file under /drive0/local/root
To have access to installed files you should make processes believe their filesystem is restricted to the one installed under /drive0/local/root
To accomplish this, the chroot command is issued :
# chroot /drive0/local/root /bin/bash
As you see this is a precarious procedure, which I don't recommend to any novice linux-user. If you still think you are up to the job, I wish you good luck.
I could go on describing how to install a linux system, but there are enough resources available on the net on this subject. one last advice : before installing extra packages you should activate some swap-space...
Frank van Gestel