The Ford Ka dashboard that Patrick and I converted into an early empeg booth prop (and which was used at least at IASCA, CES and various meets) has somehow ended up at Akai Digital. I hear from the remaining employee there that their office is likely to be cleared out any day now, so if anyone would like to have the dashboard please let me know ASAP.

It has its metal stand (which can be disassembled) and - I think - the empeg graphics panels for each side. It lacks its dock, although I daresay we could rustle one up from somnewhere. The dashboard illumination and the clock can be made to work quite easily with a 12V power supply.

I can't immediately lay hands on a photo, but I did find my expenses for CES 2001 - I guess it's too late to file them now?

Rob

You can see it in some of the riocar.org galleries:





Peter

*sigh* if it where just the rights for the empeg name and the software they gave away...

heck, i didn't know akai were still going! other than some rogers audio a few years ago, i'd say the akai reel to reel, cassette deck and amp i had were prob the best i've had! where are they based now?

hope ya find a home for it though.

Boelle, would it be so expensive to buy the rights back? not like any of it has been used in what, 7 years?
Hugh

i dont even know, but i could see some small benefits, beeing able to solve bugs... mix hijack and the player software in to one... etc etc.

what would cost money is the idea to put the empeg back in production

I see what you mean, I guess it would also be among the most expensive players to buy, as it was in it's day. I probably couldn't afford a new one at the mo, but even though i've not long had them, i dread the day that parts are just too hard to find!

a new flash drive empeg would be simply awesome!

not an bad idea... you can do it today simply by useing a ide->cf/flashdrive adapter

but a pure cf/flashdrive would be a better chioce... maybe along with an adapter for 2½ drives...

but one should always think that what you make should be comp. with the old players

yes, i've seen that and i'm quite interested in trying it on my 'spare' empeg (though i won't profess to understanding it all just yet!).

i'm wondering how much quicker upload times would be with a cf empeg, or whether it makes no difference, either way cf a more sound idea.

I'm still astounded by the low value of these players today, for what it does, there is nothing in it's league, certainly not that i'm aware of. i picked up my spare empeg for just £40, have spent a few hours and so far, $5 to repair it, it'll have an upgraded drive soon (poss to cf) and even then, will still be cheap considering what it can store and do!

There's really no significant effort required to install a CF card into an empeg as a drive replacement. Just run the disk builder as normal, and it all works.

The cheaper high-capacity CF cards, *ideal* for the empeg, are *slower* at uploading, but faster all around otherwise (startup, playback, ..).

Cheers

cheers Mark, it's next to do once the chip is replaced

Mmm.. I've even got a spare 32GB CF card sitting here..

really? for sale? i'd be interested in that, i know this is going off topic but would it be better to leave the 6gb hdd in place and add the cf card, or just run from the cf card only?

I think the whole point is to go completely solid state. Otherwise, a second hard drive is cheaper than a CF card.

Cheers

aye, that's what i intended to do, I just wondered (because i've seen people do use them as a second (slave?) drive) if there was any advantage to keeping a hdd, clearly not from what you say.

cheers,
Hugh

..for some value of "still going". Numark bought the brand four years ago and gradually divested most of the engineering talent. Today I believe only one of the original (as in MPC era) Akai engineers is left.



I think it would be challenging to find someone from whom to buy the rights for empeg or the codebase. I guess in theory Freescale now own all the IP, but I doubt they know that they do! I'm not sure anyone would notice let alone get upset if someone accidentally lost a CD containing the empeg code base at a Cambridge pub. The chances of that happening seem fairly slim though...

Rob

but do we know anyone who might accidentally lose it, and someone who might be fortunate enough to be in the right place, right time, to be able to find it?

I honestly don't know the logistics of making something like the empeg, i guess the hard part would be sourcing the components or finding someone to make the sub assemblies and the programming of chips etc,

putting it together is the easy bit, much easier than some stuff i had to build when i worked for an electronic manufacturer.

ok, so i'm probably waaay out of touch, but what would say, the main pcb in the empeg cost to make? surely someone has the cad's somewhere and it's a case of getting it printed, components fitted and the code installed?

even if this is all possible i prob wouldn't have the money to do it, but i'm curious!

Hugh

The hard part's the software. The hardware's easy. If we had the software, it could, relatively easily, be adapted to run on brand-new hardware, rather than the old design. We had it running on commodity PC hardware, running Windows, at one point.

You should go and trawl the bbs and read up on this. We have covered this ground again and again.

But in summary:

The hardware really isn't the hard part*, there are several people here on the bbs who could probably design a working empeg main board. If someone decided to make new empegs they wouldn't want to exactly duplicate the main board anyway, given that some of the chips aren't made any more.

The software is the issue. All the many man years of effort that went into make empeg as good as it is are locked up in the player code. And we don't have the source to that.

So the best that someone making new empegs now could hope for is a new main board design, with tweaks to the Linux kernel drivers to make the empeg player code think it was running on the old hardware.

Making new empegs just to run the existing player code seems a fairly pointless exercise, given that there doesn't seem to be a high demand for the existing ones (they change hands at less than $200). Sure you'd gain the ability to sync data onto it faster and you might get some spare memory to run extra apps alongside the player, but you'd still be running the old player code so the rest of the functionality would still be the same.



* at least if you are "God" or "God"-like

we where actual talking about getting hands on the source for the player software... who owns the rights right now?

Rob answered that one above:

"I think it would be challenging to find someone from whom to buy the rights for empeg or the codebase. I guess in theory Freescale now own all the IP, but I doubt they know that they do!"

yeah, but you have to ask them anyway... just "stealing" the rights is not the way to go...

It should be done proberly so that no one can be dragged to court

but are we talking about Freescale Semiconductor ? (www.freescale.com)

Where did I mention stealing anyone's rights ?

Yes.

that's why i used the " marks... could not find the right word for it

but if we got the rights for the player software along with the emplode software... who would continue the development...? it a "jackazz" at programming...

As I remember it went something like this:

Rio bought Empeg
DNNA bought Rio
Sigmatel bought the Empeg bits from DNNA
Freescale bought Sigmatel

Freescale probably don't know they own the rights to the empeg codebase.

my idea was to ask them.... a simple email should be enough.?

There are several people here qualified to hack on the Empeg player code.

and then again... if we had luck getting our hands on the rights.. should it be completely free... or should there be some limits ... ?