A few quick non-FAQ Q's:

1. Are there any plans for emptool to support 'download?'

2. My player, with 2.0b11, crashes .. occasionally. Frequently enough to be somewhat annoying, but not so much that it's not surprising every time. Once or twice a week, I'd say. Usually when "starting audio..." it just hangs and I have to cycle power by removing from dash, and pushing back in.. a couple of times when playing a song (weird!). Also seems to happen if you rapid-fire change tracks, like 10 or 20 quick track changes without waiting for one to start. I can sort of understand why it might crash there Anyway, it's not bad, and I know I'm running beta software. I just want to confirm that other people's players crash running beta SW too. I'm more than willing to tolerate the crashes until 2.0 becomes stable, hey, that's why I'm running beta! I just want to make sure it's a SW prob that others see occasionally too.. if I have a HW prob I'd rather find out sooner than later.

3. Visuals. The "most asked question in the FAQ" doesn't quite answer it. The question says "..every time I put it in the car, the visuals go away.." but the answer says ".. every time DC power is applied." So which is it? Mine loses visuals each time I start my car up, assuming the "blinkeylight delay" has expired. Should they only go away the first time it's put in the car, and stay on every time I restart until I yank it and put it back in again? Does Hijack get around this? I understand empeg's liability.. are there plans to perhaps add a feature where one can select "favorite non-visual screen" or something like that? I tend to turn my car off with the player in visual mode, and then it starts with now&next, which, while very useful in some cases, is not my favorite. If I can't start it up with my last screen all the time (ie, my last was a visual) I'd at least like it to start up with track&artist..

thanks for any and all responses!

- reid

I don't know if emptool supports downloads, but I know JEmplode does. If all you need is downloads under Linux, that might be your ticket.

2.0b11 has been pretty stable for me, but it's interesting that you should mention a lockup on "Starting Audio". I got this lockup EXACTLY ONCE on my normally perfectly-stable player. I do not know what causes it. Anyone?

Regarding the "DC power visuals" thing, understand this:

- "DC power" is our shorthand for "whenever the player thinks it's getting power from the sled connector as opposed to the home connector and is therefore assumed to be installed in the car at that time".

- It only goes back to a text screen at BOOT TIME. This is shorthand for "any time it goes through a complete reload of all software including the kernel from scratch, not when it wakes up out of standby mode". So the go-back-to-text-screen thing does not happen when you wake the player out of standby mode. For information on what standby mode is, please search the FAQ on "standby mode".

- Mark Lord's Hijack has a feature that allows you to get around the go-back-to-text-screen-thing, yes. It requires one of his latest versions of Hijack in order to work properly on 2.0b11.

Does Jemplode download playlists as directory structures, or does it mash everything into the base directory, like emplode does?

Jemplode creates folders with the same names as the playlists. You can also (in the latest versions) create folders based on your own specifications by using backslashes in the filespec in the naming options.

"Also seems to happen if you rapid-fire change tracks, like 10 or 20 quick track changes without waiting for one to start."

This happens really often on my Mk2a, maybe due to the fact I often skip tracks??? I never had any crashes at startup, though.