At this year's 21st Anniversary Meet in Bletchley Park, I demo'd a new all-in-one builder image, which is used to format new drives for the empeg, and at the same time populate those drives with the car2-v2.01 software. So, a one-step new-drive process.

This is a work-in-progress. There is currently an early version of it on the BigDisk page (link is at top of the Hijack page, which is at the top of this page!).

But hold off if you were going to grab it, unless you cannot wait. While the existing image also installs hdparm,rsync,vi, and a bunch of other Really Useful Things, there is more that can yet be included.

So I'm working on an update to it which will include the WebLite interface, fidsift.sh (from the Hijack menu by default!), set_empeg_max_fid.sh, the FlanceDance visuals, and other nice goodies. Hopefully before this coming Tuesday.

More suggestions of extras welcomed here!

Cheers

First update dumped to the builder site now. It has weblite and the FlanceDance visuals, automatically runs set_empeg_max_fid to handle large numbers of tracks/playlists, has the hdparm and rsync binaries, as well as the fidsift.sh script and a preconfigured Hijack menu entry to manually re-invoke it after each sync.

What I cannot remember/figure out, is how to replace the "Anna Vu" background with the improved one. Tony?

Also, can somebody here create a favicon.ico file for the empeg for me? Then I'll include that as well with the web interface.

Thanks

Use the emplode one? Attached.

Edit: NB: There are multiple icons in that file, that are different. One is blue/white, one is dark green. Not quite sure how to extract them, just now.

Different colour-depths and sizes. Recall that when we first wrote emplode, 16-colour (and 256-colour palettised) displays were still a thing.

Now linked directly from the top of the forum pages.

It works! Thanks.
I will add that to builder_v21 shortly. EDIT: Done!

Great, thanks!

PS: Is it just me, or is your profile avatar link broken?

Yeah I get that's what happens in .ico files, but the colours are quite different which I thought was a bit strange. e.g. the icon changes appearance in Windows Explorer depending on the view you have (large vs small icons for example). That's not a particularly new thing. Normally you'd just have different sizes rather than relying on scaling (which doesn't work well in 16x16 and 32x32 type sizes). The blue and white one looks best to me.

GIMP crashed trying to save the layers out separately. That was the closest I got to separating them.

Ahh.. gimp. right. Okay, extracted just the pretty blue/white icon from the file now, and updated builder_v21 with it.

Thanks again!

I built that into my Logo Editor program and then forgot the details. Researching...

Looks like it's just a couple of files, as long as you get the file format correct. FAQ Entry here. Use caution: there are some BBS threads where people tried to replace those files, and the files were of the incorrect file format, and so their players locked up when they selected the visuals.

Sorry I can't get you the files in the correct format right now, since I'm not in a position where I can futz with the empeg itself at the moment. However, there is a way that you could do it, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty.

Procedure:

- Run the Logo Editor program (in your case running it under a Windows emulator).

- In the Logo Editor program, open the attached document file to get the desired images onto the screen. Anna VU on top, Tux Much on the bottom.

- Use the Logo Editor to upload the graphics to your player to get them installed in the correct format (it's an option on the File menu).

- Check that they look correct on the player and that the visuals work without crashing.

- Use a separate FTP program or a shell terminal to copy off the two loose files noted in FAQ entry, and include them in your builder image. FAQ entry says the files are:

Anna VU:
/empeg/lib/visuals/vuback.raw

Tux Much:
/empeg/lib/visuals/logo.raw

Okay, thanks. I got your .bin file, and I already had something called vuback.raw. When I tried including vuback.raw in the builder image, the result was plain old annavu. That was yesterday.

I just tried again now, without changing anything, and.. the new vuback image is there already. Huh! I must've messed something up when trying it yesterday. All good now, the current builder_v21 has the vuback.raw visual installed and working. There's a logo.raw file in there too, but that one is probably just the original that came with the player software.

What is Tux Much?

The builder_v21 image has now been updated to include both player version 2.01 and version v3alpha11 software. By default, v2.01 is installed, but one can switch versions at any time by connecting over serial and issuing either of these commands: switch_to_v3alpha11 or switch_to_v2.01

There are default empty databases installed by the builder for both versions, but after switching from one version to another you'll likely want to rebuild the database if you have any tracks/playlists installed. Do so thusly:

rw
player ## Wait for player to rebuild databases and start up, then..
## Hit control^C to interrupt the player
ro
exit


Done.

Tux Much is one of the visuals, which, like Anna VU, you could replace the graphic if you wanted. The original graphic, in the file "logo.raw", is a bit blocky, and the logo editor graphic file that I attached contains another version which has anti-aliasing to make it look less blocky. There is no harm in leaving it as-is, the only reason I included it is because the Logo Editor program updates both Anna VU and Tux Much at the same time.

The FAQ entry says:

Wow. Amazing.

So,if I now get myself a 128gb flash drive and and an adapter, can I then use this builder to upgrade my empeg? Since IDE-SSDs are not trivial to get, CF cards are the way to go?

That's the idea. Yes, CF cards are the safest bet for this, because they really are native PATA/IDE drives, which is what the empeg requires. CF Card "adapters" are totally passive devices, which simply expand the CF pin-out to the IDE-44 pin spacing, so compatibility of those has never been an issue.

SD cards, though cheap, don't seem to have compatible adapters available.

Roger does have a nicely working mSATA drive w/adapter in his empeg, but it is unknown if that was good fortune or if it is something easily repeated.

The builder_v21 is the best way to initialize any new "drive" for use in a Mk2/Mk2a empeg/RioCar. You'll still have to copy your tunes over afterward (direct copy, PC copy, rsync, emplode, jemplode etc..), but the builder sets everything up nicely for you before The Copy.

Note: At some point soon-ish, I hope to also provide just the builder_v21 root filesystem, with all of its goodies, as a non-destructive .upgrade for existing disks that are already loaded with tunes/playlists.

Cheers

Awesommeness! You guys are fantastic!
Got a CF card and adapter on order. As soon as they're here, I'll do my first disk upgrade in what? 15 years? Just realized what an old fart I've become, lol :-)
(and, btw, how robust and reliable these empegs are)

This morning I have updated the builder_bigdisk_v21.upgrade image to include a copy of the empeg-remote app for Android as a clickable item in the root directory of the empeg's filesystem. Other than making the builder image larger, this shouldn't affect anyone and you can just ignore it if you like.

Or.. you could then surf to the empeg's IP address from a web browser on your Android device, and click on the empeg-remote-android.apk file to download/install it on your device. This will require enabling "Unknown Sources" briefly on Android (most will prompt you for this). The .apk binary is the exact debug image found in the git repo for the app. I have not rebuilt/modified it in any way.

If you are unfamiliar with the app.. well, let's just say you have been missing out on some really cool tech! It provides something akin to the WebLite interface, except directly from a full screen Android app, and is very slick indeed.

Downside? It does require network access to the empeg. So, at home, normally no issue, but most people don't have their empeg connected to a wifi router when in the car. Mmmm.. yet another project!

* * *

Along with the updated builder image, I am now also providing a more basic car2_v21.upgrade image, which can be used to install all of the fancy add-ons found in the v21 builder image without having to reformat your empeg. This installs just like any other software upgrade, and leaves your tracks/playlists intact. Otherwise it has all of the extras from the builder_bigdisk_v21 setup, including WebLite, the Android app, hdparm, rsync, vi, smartctl, ...

Both images can be found in the usual place, either by clicking on the BigDisk Builder link up top here, or by going directly to http://rtr.ca/bigdisk/

Finally found some time to do the upgrade. So far, everything worked without a glitch, no errors no problems, very smooth ride. Uploading all my tunes now to the CF card will take a few days, but so far also that seems to run without any problems.

Thanks for all these resources over all these years!

love.it.

Hijack v526 is now available, and has been incorporated into the v21 bigdisk builder images.

New in this release: fix long-standing race condition in Linux IDE driver whereby changes in drive status could be missed due to interrupt handling. This may or may not be the cause of some of the SSD incompatibility issues with the empeg.

If anyone out there still has a Yansen/Yanzten SSD they could re-test with, your efforts would be appreciated here, and you may just get a working empeg+SSD combo as a result!

I indeed have one of those non-Kingspec "Yansen" SSDs. I don't know if I'm going to get the time to try that drive in the very near future though. I'll put it on my to-do list.

Really glad to see you found that race condition bug. Is that only in the Empeg's IDE driver, or is that in all Linux IDE drivers?

I think it was fixed upstream many years ago, and only really comes into play when the processor is VERY VERY SLOW.

No guarantee it will fix anything other than Jason's "CFF" card, but there's a chance it might.

Cheers

I feel just about as special as the day my first empeg arrived in the mail 20 years ago

It's been a while since I ran those commands, and they no longer work without a bit of fuss for me: not enough free space on the root filesystem.

The problem seems to be that when I added the .APK file for the empegRemote app, not enough space remained for running those switch commands. So I may update the bigdisk builder again to put that .APK onto /drive0 instead, and possibly also move the .tar.gz files for 2.01 and v3a11 there too, which frees up about 20% of the total space.

More later..