I just installed my new drive cable after getting a unit with a faulty one. It's now perfect as far as drive access and booting goes. Phew. :)

Last night I had the empeg (mk2a) connected to my DLINK 8-port 10/100 Switch. The only other device on the network active at the time was my Win2K machine, connected with a 3Com 100mbit NIC.

I started a large sync (many many GB's of music files). I noticed that I was getting a lot of collisions during the upload - which I have noticed every other time as well. I have previously only done a handful of songs at a time for testing purposes.

Whiel I was asleep, and after about 2GB of transfers, I received a sync error 5 with a result code of all ff. I had actually received the exact same error last week during a test whith a small group of files (maybe 2GB as well...) A that time it seemed that all the music had been transfered OK.

This time, all the destination folders were on the empeg, but of course all the files after the first 2GB were missing.

I've got the transfer going with USB right now at home. Don't know if it will be finished when I get home (may still be running or may have stopped - I'll only find out in about 9 hours).

I'd really like any suggestions/tips for getting my Ethernet connection up to speed. USB is about half the transfer speed on the empeg (expected behaviour). This is fine for a couple of songs, but not very nice with multiple gigs.

On a sidenote, when I plugged the empeg into USB, it knocked out my USB keyboard. I had to change my keyboard to a different port to get it back online (ASUS A7V with 5 USB ports: Sandisk SM reader, MS Intellimouse Explorer, MS Internet Keyboard Pro and the empeg (keybord has two USB MS game controllers connected to it)).

Thanks guys.

Bruno

What version of the software are you running? 1.03 or 2 beta? You may want to downgrade to 1.03 to do big transfers like that then upgrade when you are done loading up music.

Sean

When the collission light blinks on a network hub, that doesn't necessarily indicate a problem. It is possible that you simply encountered a bug in the software that was unrelated to the amount of network traffic. Then again, it might have been precisely that, I don't know: there was another bug report of synch errors when synching on a busy network.

When using beta versions of emplode, always do your work/synchs in small batches.

Also, it would be a good test to downgrade to 1.03 and do the big synch, just to rule out other problems.

Try changing the PC to 10 Mbit.
Some hubs don't handle translations between 100Mb and 10Mb very well.

Good suggestion.

Damn, it was at the forefront of my mind to put what software version I was running and it looks like I forgot. :)

I've always been running only 1.03. Developer image.

We'll see how things went tonight when I get home. I'll still have about 2GB to transfer, so I'll see if I can drop my network speed to 10mbit. BTW, I've never had the need to do this - any quick pointers to how/where to make the settings to save me any time looking?

Bruno

any quick pointers to how/where to make the settings to save me any time looking?

If setting it on the hub, it might not be available. Usually only the expensive "managed" hubs have web or software interfaces for configuration. If this is available, it will be in the manual for the hub.

If setting the speed of the ethernet card on the PC, it depends on the card. Some drivers will have this option available in the Network control panel somewhere. Others (like a 3com card I just worked on yesterday) require booting to DOS and running a utility off of a floppy disk and setting the option in the utility's text-mode screen.

I was able to switch down to 10baseT using the Media Type on the advanced tab of the NIC properties page in the Network settings (Win2K)... That was a mouthful. :)

Just started a new sync worth about 10GB. Getting loads of collisions during the transfer still. Again, just the computer and the empeg are currently on the network.

My USB transfer was still going when I got home. It should still have been going now, but it stopped two songs into "This is Hardcore" from Pulp. Needless to say, there were a few more albums left before the alphabetical list reached Z, as well as a meaty compilations folder yet to be started.

I was had been doing something in the foreground and noticed the empeg switch from synchronising to building its database. Emplode was frozen. The building finished and I noticed how many songs were online and managed to figure out where it had stopped. I had to reboot the computer to get Emplode to recognise the empeg again. Running it again without rebooting caused it not to find any hardware. I'm assuming instance of the USB driver must have died along with the app.

The database on the unit was never properly built/recorded, so every time I would cycle the power, it would take at least 60 seconds to get to a menu. Firing up emplode, allowing a sync and rebuild fixed that problem.

So now I'm trying to put all the missing files online using Ethernet again. I'll likely hit the sack ina few minutes and just let it run. I'll keep my fingers crossed while sleeping that everything will be cool when I wake up.

As an aside, I also had one of those remote failures mentioned in another thread. Right after turning on SHUFFLE while in Now and Next text mode the remote died. Nothing on it would work. Took out battery, put it back but nothing. Unplugged empeg, waited a sec, plugged back in and remote worked. Weird. Went through some menus and ended up turning on shuffle again while in Now and Next mode (that was an accident, I meant to go to a different display mode first). Problem with remote happened again. Dead. AFter pressing madly on a few keys, the player suddenly responded to some prev/next track presses. Then it once again stopped responding to the remote. And now that's where it stands, even after a couple of power-downs. I'll try a fresh battery tomorrow (after going out to buy one). So something else to keep my fingers crossed about.

At least the new drive cable seems to be working very well. :) Oh, and of course the music quality is excellent (LAME 3.90 encoded VBR files with slightly altered r3mix settings.). I hope 2.0 fixes the seeking problems with these VBR files however.

Bruno

IMHO, I don't trust Windows between what is says and what it does. Does your hub/switch have indicators for speed (ie. if its using 100Mb). If so, I'd use that to verify that is actually is running at 10 now. You can always just use a 10Mb only cable (2 twisted-pairs instead of 4) which should make the card detection switch itself to 10Mb (like it would if it detected a 10Mb only hub).

Another test would be to use a x-over cable and hook the two machines up directly. You PC should be forced down to 10Mbs and in full-duplex mode (no collisions here!). If that fails, then I'd assume the collisions are just a pretty light show and not the problem.

I'm using a P800 Dell with the 3COM 3c905C card running at 100MB, Asante 10/100 'hub', emplode/player ver. 2.03B and Win2kPro and my syncronising seems to work well (though I haven't gone over 1.5 GB yet and I don't pay much attention if everything is working).

Does anyone know what procotol is used for the actual downloading of data into the EMPEG, TCP or UDP? TCP has reply packets, which could cause collisions on their way back upstream, but also has the sliding window tranmission scheme to only have so many packets out without replies slowing the sender down appropriatly, where as UDP should just keep shoving stuff into the pipe and the card will do its best to send it but sending at 100Mbs into something taking packets at 10Mbs, I could see some backup occuring (in the form of collisions I would assume). If it finally backs up to far and emplode gets an error returned from the TCP/IP stack, that may stop the whole process.

Ofcourse, I just realised its 2:30AM, I could just be in la-la land.

Brett

Actually your problem reminds me of the problem I had with my Empeg MK2a. Well, had...erm, I've never been able to solve it really. Combining the 10gig it came with with a new 48gig IBM resulted in slowdowns when synching and eventually locking up.
I just decided in the end that those two drives didn't get along too well and I removed the 10gig. (strange since they're both IBM)
I'm currently only using the 48gig and I'm awaiting the new IBM 60gig. 60gig should be enough for my needs and then some, so then I can get rid of the 48gig.
Nobody was able to solve my problem (not even Hugo), so I gave up on it.

All my data was coming from reading the display on the switch, not from what Windows was reporting. This was both for link speeds and transmission details.

Setting the NIC to 10Mb seemed to work. I synced another 10GB or more over the night and it did not crap out. It finished successfully.

While running in this config, I do not have my full-duplex lights on. So I'm assuming it's in half duplex. Even when the computer was at 100Mb, the empeg has never shown a full-duplex connection on the switch. My computer previously did.

I suppose for me, this isn't a huge issue any more because all my music is now installed. :) But I do QA for a living right now, and I guess some of it carries over to my every day life. No, I don't enjoy being a nit picker. :)

Bruno

You can always just use a 10Mb only cable (2 twisted-pairs instead of 4)

That won't work in 99.9% of Fast Ethernet installations. 100BaseTX still only uses 2 pairs and almost no one uses 100BaseT4 (the type that uses all 4 pairs).

Oops. You're right. TX is still 2 pairs. Like I said, la-la land.

Brett