#294812 - 11/03/2007 17:04
Re: CF empeg
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Here's a link to the actual manufacturer (or designer?) of these particular CF adapters. PC Engines CFDISK.2D/G
Edited by mlord (11/03/2007 17:05)
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#294813 - 11/03/2007 17:10
Re: CF empeg
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Ooohh.. they even have a variation with threaded screw holes, which would make mounting it even simpler.
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#294814 - 11/03/2007 17:29
Re: CF empeg
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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And for anyone going Rob's route -- all CF, no HD -- there seem to be a lot of bargain CF cards out there now. I see an 8GB for CAD$120, or US$90.
Edited by mlord (11/03/2007 17:30)
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#294815 - 12/03/2007 00:13
Re: CF empeg
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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I paid $83.99 each for the cards pictured from Newegg just FYI.
So far, there seems to be no unexpected issues with running an empeg 100% with CF cards. As long as the cards last at least long enough until I upgrade to bigger ones, I will probably use this empeg as my main unit.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736
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#294816 - 12/03/2007 10:20
Re: CF empeg
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/06/2001
Posts: 2504
Loc: Roma, Italy
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Quote:
So, rephrasing: CF is the only interface applicable here.
I was assuming that some IDE-to-SD interface exists in the market, but I have not shearched, so I was too optimist? 
Anyway, IDE-to-CF will work perfectly for our purpose. And, at present, CF are also those with larger capacity.
I am hoping that in a year, or slighly more that than, I can start considering two >= 40GB CF units to replace my 100GB hdd, which, so far, is what I need for my music. It may be not so cheap, but I am really attacted by all the avdantages of CF. And, some modifications on the chassis may make my empeg backup finally less painful.
_________________________
= Taym =
MK2a #040103216 * 100Gb *All/Colors* Radio * 3.0a11 * Hijack = taympeg
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#294817 - 13/03/2007 00:50
Re: CF empeg
[Re: Taym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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Quote:
I was assuming that some IDE-to-SD interface exists in the market, but I have not shearched, so I was too optimist?
The very first link in the first post of this thread was to an SD > IDE adaptor.
_________________________
Glenn
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#294819 - 13/03/2007 10:48
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: newguy1]
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member
Registered: 02/04/2002
Posts: 148
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This is great! Just wanted to reiterate that another viable option is the Seagate EE25.1 Series ST940813AM. 40GB, and really rugged. $150 retail, got mine for $20 used :-)
I think I might consider the all-flash route though, if it gets cheap enough. They will continue making bigger CF cards for quite a while, its what just about ALL professional photographers use.
Jeff
_________________________
Empeg Mk2a 60G
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#294821 - 14/03/2007 16:04
Re: CF empeg
[Re: Taym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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My understanding is that CF is very close to ATA/IDE and the adapters don't do that much besides adapt the physical interface. Thus, you can't have one IDE channel accept multiple CF cards without having some higher-level processing, which would amount to a RAID processor.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#294822 - 14/03/2007 19:20
Re: CF empeg
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Most CF cards support the master/slave concept just like hard drives. The CF adapters I'm using have a jumper (well.. pads/holes for one to be soldered on) for Slave-select.
Rob's dual-CF player obviously has one master CF drive and one slave CF drive as well.
Either way, that's two CF cards on one IDE channel, before any extra hackery.
Extra hackery is definitely possible..
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#294823 - 14/03/2007 19:35
Re: CF empeg
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Sorry. I meant on a single connection. Although I guess it's possible for an adapter to include the "extension" to the next drive internally. Certainly two devices would be the max, though, right?
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#294824 - 14/03/2007 19:41
Re: CF empeg
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
Sorry. I meant on a single connection. Although I guess it's possible for an adapter to include the "extension" to the next drive internally. Certainly two devices would be the max, though, right?
Yup. No more than 2 devices per IDE cable.
Without extra (hardware+software) hackery, that is.
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#294825 - 14/03/2007 20:51
Re: CF empeg
[Re: maczrool]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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CF card (and SD and ...) controllers deal with wear levelling - or at least reputable brands do. This means you'll see way over 100,000 writes per LBA sector, as you'll not actually be writing the same sector all the time.
Obviously this doesn't work if you're thrashing the entire disk equally!
Hugo
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#294826 - 14/03/2007 20:54
Re: CF empeg
[Re: Taym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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I'm sure mlord could come up with something to make a simple SD adaptor viable - the IDE interface on the empeg is just 16 memory mapped locations, so you could put anything you like in there as long as the kernel is modified appropriately.
Thing is, CF is a hell of a lot easier and available in the same sort of capacities for about the same money as SD, so it's probably not really worth the hassle.
Hugo
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#294827 - 14/03/2007 21:38
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: mlord]
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addict
Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
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This sounds like a really worthwhile mod Denise only has a 20 or 30Gb drive and wanted an upgrade anyhow. It sounds like it's viable enough that I can go out and buy an 8Gb CF (£50), an adapter (£15) and a 120Gb laptop drive (£47), put it together, (find the PUIS pin if needed) and have a fast booting Empeg with 128Gb for a little over £100 - cool. This would also stay cooler playing music that's on the CF?
_________________________
LittleBlueThing
Running twin 30's
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#294828 - 14/03/2007 21:50
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: LittleBlueThing]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
This sounds like a really worthwhile mod
Denise only has a 20 or 30Gb drive and wanted an upgrade anyhow.
It sounds like it's viable enough that I can go out and buy an 8Gb CF (£50), an adapter (£15) and a 120Gb laptop drive (£47), put it together, (find the PUIS pin if needed) and have a fast booting Empeg with 128Gb for a little over £100 - cool.
This would also stay cooler playing music that's on the CF?
Perhaps. The basic method I'm using right now is to not be clever about where the tunes are stored. The hard drive stays spun-down until/unless something is needed that's not currently cached in the CF card. At which point it caches that new data into the CF.
Generally, I don't think I'll be caching many tunes there, as the idea was to allow use of the Tuner/Aux without spinning up the drive. For tunes, the drive will still spin up.
One question is, should I let it cache tunes in the CF? Probably just a waste of write cycles to do so.
----
A different way to do this, would be to have the CF card contain a normal empeg filesystem, and have Hijack ensure that tag files and database stuff etc.. all end up on the CF card, and only the actual tunes be eligible for residing on the hard disk.
But my current implementation achieves that automatically, "learning" over time, and permits removal of the CF card completely at any point, without any meaningful loss of data.
Anyway, it's working here in a "lab setup". I have to add a small control GUI to the Hijack Menu system for it, and decide whether to have it detect tunes and not cache them, or not.
Cheers
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#294829 - 14/03/2007 21:53
Re: CF empeg
[Re: altman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
I'm sure mlord could come up with something to make a simple SD adaptor viable - the IDE interface on the empeg is just 16 memory mapped locations, so you could put anything you like in there as long as the kernel is modified appropriately.
Yup, absolutely. And at that point, we could have quite a few "drives" rather than merely two. They'd be slower and more CPU-intensive in use.
But I agree, it doesn't seem worth the hassle, considering the current state of CF cards and how much simpler they are here.
Cheers
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#294830 - 14/03/2007 23:07
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: mlord]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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Hmmm, I'm trying to do the math, and it seems like you get 1.5 kiloyears of cacheing at 1 meg/minute before your compact flash card has had 100k writes, assuming a 0% cache hit rate. if that number is correct, I'd say definitely cache to the card, unless the writing out take a non-trivial amount of processing power.
Of course, with the price of compact flash falling, the compact flash empeg is going to be more prevalent than the hard drive empeg soon enough.
Matthew
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#294831 - 15/03/2007 05:45
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Quote:
A different way to do this, would be to have the CF card contain a normal empeg filesystem, and have Hijack ensure that tag files and database stuff etc.. all end up on the CF card, and only the actual tunes be eligible for residing on the hard disk.
As long as the hard disk doesn't get too full (i.e. it's always got more space than the CF card), the stock player software will already do this for you. Remember that, in a two drive empeg, it'll always attempt to put the FIDs on the disk with more space.
_________________________
-- roger
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#294832 - 15/03/2007 08:28
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: mlord]
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addict
Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
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I think the dual filesystem approach sounds good (at least for my personal target of faster CF boot, play mp3s). Keep all the boot stuff on the CF and allow the natural order of things (according to Roger) to use the HD until there's not much free space (which sounds like a reason to get a lower capacity CF too maybe even just a gig). I guess I can achieve this by making the system boot with one (CF) drive only and then following the upgrade process to add a second drive. I don't think this needs much (well, it doesn't *need* any) modification to Hijack either does it? Just clever setup. Hmm, so what Hijack configurations would I like?  Spin up 2nd drive (asynchronously) at boot : Y/N Y=I tend to play HD stored music and want faster boot. N=I tend to use AUX/FM and want to avoid spinup unless the player sends a media request Am I understanding? PS I know I'm merely speculating - maybe you can consider the design implications of all these new fantasies PPS Damned bbs timeout - I had to take a call whilst writing this - when I submitted it it said "The form you have submitted is no longer valid". Ended up using ethereal to capture the re-POST from the browser cache - fun though.
_________________________
LittleBlueThing
Running twin 30's
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#294833 - 15/03/2007 12:02
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
Quote:
A different way to do this, would be to have the CF card contain a normal empeg filesystem, and have Hijack ensure that tag files and database stuff etc.. all end up on the CF card, and only the actual tunes be eligible for residing on the hard disk.
As long as the hard disk doesn't get too full (i.e. it's always got more space than the CF card), the stock player software will already do this for you. Remember that, in a two drive empeg, it'll always attempt to put the FIDs on the disk with more space.
Well, that's the problem. It'll also put the tag files there, instead of on the CF. But it's an easy enough workaround in Hijack, were I ever to go that route instead.
Cheers
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#294834 - 15/03/2007 12:10
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: LittleBlueThing]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
I guess I can achieve this by making the system boot with one (CF) drive only and then following the upgrade process to add a second drive.
Sure, if that's how you want it to work. With this straightforward scheme, the hard drive will always spin up at boot time, whether you set the "no-spin" jumper or not. And the empeg will pause during boot, waiting for the spin-up per-normal. So the CF card won't gain you much with this setup.
As near as I can see it, the only two worthwhile CF methods are (1) all CF (best overall, but lowest capacity), and (2) CF slave drive as cache, using my hacked kernel (not yet available to others).
You see, the player software wants to READ from all FID directories at boot. So all FID filesystems have to be available and mounted at player startup time, and it has to read the filesystem "meta data" (the invisible glue for tracking directories, free space, etc..) at startup.
Using the stock software, this means all drives will spin up and be read at boot.
The approach I've taken instead, is to not put any filesystem on the CF card (not that this matters), and to use the free space (all of the CF card) as a sector-by-sector low-level disk cache for the real hard disk. The first time it boots, the hard drive spins up and is read as normal, but all read data gets copied over to the CF card at the same time.
The next time it boots, all of the sectors it needs are probably now also present on the CF card, so the hard drive doesn't spin up. The player software still mounts the hard disk filesystems, and scans its directories, BUT.. because all of that data is now present on the CF card, my hacked kernel gets it from the CF instead of the disk. The player software doesn't know about that, and thinks it all came from disk.
And so on..
Cheers
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#294835 - 15/03/2007 16:01
Re: CF empeg
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
Here's a link to the actual manufacturer (or designer?) of these particular CF adapters.
PC Engines CFDISK.2D/G
Okay, I just now received my order for four (4) new CFDISK.2G adapters. Wow, that was quick -- airmail from Switzerland.
And to confirm, these are *exactly* what I want for this application (empeg). They have built-in threaded standoff posts, that mate perfectly with the stock empeg hard drive tray screws. The only nuisance is that one has to remove resistor R1 from the adapter for a "slave" drive (or replace it with a jumper in the suppled through-holes, which is what I'm doing).
Cheers
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#294836 - 15/03/2007 16:07
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Quote:
It'll also put the tag files there, instead of on the CF.
So? Those tag files will be picked up at the next rebuild and "compiled" into /empeg/var on the CF card.
_________________________
-- roger
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#294837 - 15/03/2007 17:23
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
Quote:
It'll also put the tag files there, instead of on the CF.
So? Those tag files will be picked up at the next rebuild and "compiled" into /empeg/var on the CF card.
True, true. But it still won't work, as per my other post above.
Cheers
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#294838 - 15/03/2007 20:01
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: mlord]
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member
Registered: 28/08/2003
Posts: 149
Loc: Isle of Wight, UK
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Do you anticipate releasing this newer version of Hijack anytime soon, Mark?
I might just get an adaptor (configure it for slave) and a low-capacity CF card...
_________________________
Steve
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#294839 - 15/03/2007 20:04
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: LittleBlueThing]
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member
Registered: 28/08/2003
Posts: 149
Loc: Isle of Wight, UK
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This seems to be a very good price... anyone have any experience of these drives in an empeg?
_________________________
Steve
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#294840 - 15/03/2007 20:17
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: Major_Sarcasm]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
Do you anticipate releasing this newer version of Hijack anytime soon, Mark?
I might just get an adaptor (configure it for slave) and a low-capacity CF card...
Yeah, I hope to sit down with it again over the weekend to iron out the kinks and add the Hijack menu support for controlling the feature. Whether I release it for others depends on whether anyone else is going to use it or not.
If you want it, then get yourself a CF-IDE adapter board, configure it as SLAVE, and install it in your player. Then get a small (or huge, whatever) CF card for it, and let me know you're ready to try it.
Cheers
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#294841 - 15/03/2007 23:48
Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid..
[Re: matthew_k]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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If the CF is just used for storing the kernel, (tags?), cache, etc, then maybe it can be small enough to be disposable, letting us not care if it gets thrashed beyond its writability. CF cards must be like any other technology; people upgrade and want to get rid of their older smaller version. There must be stacks of 128 meg cards for the empeg to eat.
It would be great if tags on the CF could make it faster to load large playlists. 1.03 rarely hesitated as much as 2.0, and maybe that's why.
_________________________
- FireFox31 110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set
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