I've done my best to refresh my knowledge with the FAQ, and carefully reviewed the instructions for drive upgrades, but I'm stuck. I have two empeg Mk.2 units. The one with 2.01 software (Hijack v526) with a 40G drive is working fine. Using Win10 and Emplode v2.10 I can connect using serial or ethernet, though sometimes it takes a few reboots to get the serial connection to show. The other player has 3.00-alpha11 software (Hijack v526) installed and a single 80G drive boots, can only ever see ethernet, no matter what I try.

The 80G drive unit has no music present, and I'm unsure of its state, so I'd like to wipe it and put it back to 2.01 using Mark's latest .upgrade file. When I sync it I see the error, "Initializing - All music could not be synchronized, error 0xc0041002", so it is not in a good place. Unfortunately to install the .upgrade file I need a serial connection, right? Oddly using Hyperterminal or PuTTY I can see output and interact with it on COM2, just not from Emplode. Could that be because of the newer software on it? What is my best course of action to get this one working?

I have a 120G CF card on order, and got the adapter Tony recommended a few days back.
My plan is to install that into the 40G unit, but since that is my only stable player I'd really like to sort out the other unit's issues first. Your advice is greatly appreciated.

I believe I see the error in my ways. I had never installed the car-emplode-v2.00 setup.exe. and instead was just running emplode.exe from the v2.10 software folder thinking I wanted the newest version, and associating the .upgrade to that. The Rio Upgrade Wizard is only contained within the v2.00 software. and once I installed that it now match up with the instructions and load the upgrade file as I was expecting. I knew it would come down to user (my) error.

I guess it has been too long sense I messed with this. Starting to recall the process. Still not out of the woods, since now the upgrade wizard throws, . But it does seem to connect via the serial port and load to the player. Something to look into further tomorrow.

Yes, I believe the Rio Upgrade Wizard is what is normally used. The idea is to run it to "install" the .upgrade file onto the empeg, and then reboot the empeg to actually "run" the upgrade. After that completes, reboot again (automatic from bigdisk) into the running player software (bigdisk builder only; regular empeg builder requires one to install the software .upgrade after).

Pump errors come from the bootloader firmware, which is a part we never upgrade, and lack source code for. They are almost always curable by zeroing out the partition table of the drive before installing/running the bigdisk builder. The builder itself cannot do this, because it never gets to run when pump fails.

So.. delete all existing partitions first using a PC. I prefer to just zero it using Linux with the drive attached via USB:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=2048

Embarrassingly, Hugo himself had some troubles earlier this year trying to install an SSD -- pump errors (I believe Hugo wrote the "pump" stuff). Didn't figure it out at the time, so he gave up and used CF cards instead, and send me the SSD for forensics. I played with it briefly, and then zeroed out the partition table.. after which bigdisk was happy, and the SSD works fine.

Cheers

Thanks Mark! That seems to have worked, and 80G drive is good again and showing available space correctly. I received the 128G CF in the mail today, so with this recent experience I feel confident that will be a success too.

If one reads enough of the the BigDisk thread linked above, one may discover a few cool features:

There's a pre-installed script on the player to switch between the two latest versions of the player software: v2-Final and v3alpha11, without having to re-install anything. This can be run over a serial connection, or from a telnet session.

There's a copy (APK file) of the Android "Empeg Remote" app on the empeg, which can be installed to a smartphone by surfing to the empeg's built-in webserver and then clicking on the APK file.

"Empeg Remote" is seriously sexy stuff, and so few people seem to know about it.

BigDisk is indeed cool and a big part of why I wanted to install a new CF and rebuild. My past experience with v3alpha11 was not great (wanted FLAC support), so plan to stick with v2 for now, but so nice to have the option to easily switch back and forth.

My 128G SanDisk CF is in, working and music reloaded; the install could not have been easier using Tony's recommended adapter and the latest BigDisk Builder upgrade file. I'm using Empeg Remote from my desktop using the Android Studio Virtual Player. I would only love it more if it could run on iOS, but perhaps a reason to pickup an Android tablet just to run this app.

I briefly struggled to get the web server and Empeg Remote working. Then realized the player was in its new dock. Then I incorrectly thought the FAQ was referring to the Hijack Home/Work Location option, so kept toggling that until I realized it was Force AC/DC Power Mode that need to be set to Force AC/Home. In re-reading I see Tony stated this clearly, I just did not read it carefully.

To all that have continued to put effort into this ... THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

There are two sections of that FAQ I didn't write: That Hijack section, and the developer section.

Ah, yes. Your dock has a factory/PCATS tuner jack on it, so that conflicted with the usual "auto-detect" wiring that most docks have. Thus the need in this case to Force it.

Cheers