I guess this problem isn't as serious as people made it sound - judging from the fact that Mike fixed it (fingers crossed) last week and so far only one person has asked for the fixed version!

Total feedback so far: zero

Rob

Well, I haven't had any results back from testing but I'm going to release it anyway. You'll find it on the interim upgrades page at http://www2.empeg.com/upgrades/test/interim/.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Rob,

I don't think that you are being completely fair here.

Mac asked for people who were able to do 'extensive testing' 'this afternoon'. I am one of the people who is suffering from this bug, but I don't have time at the moment (currently on assignment in Barcelona) to test the fix 'extensively'.

Now that it's released I'll try it a bit when I get back (should be wednesday) and let you know what happens.

Cheers,

Paul.

Paul Haigh, 6GB, Blue
Reg: 4120 - Serial 00254

isn't as serious as people made it sound - judging from the fact that Mike fixed it (fingers crossed) last week and so far only one person has asked for the fixed version! Total feedback so far: zero

Hey Rob, that's a bit too fast!
I had other difficulties that needed resolving that very Thursday when you asked volunteers. Got no answer when I asked for the trial version Thursday night. Would have helped gladly as I am confronted with the error continuously.

For example, I ripped 9 CD's over the week-end. Emplode fell over 11 times before I gave up and used serial to pump them across (Sunday night and the better part of today). Will test the new release tonight and will let you know if it is any better.

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)

Even though I never got this bug on my system (and therefore couldn't test it for you), I'm still curious as to what you think the cause of the bug might have been. Is it something about the USB drivers or what?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

haven't had any results back from testing ( . . ) I'm going to release it anyway

Mike, thanks for releasing. I believe the errors are gone.
I threw everything at it that's on my lists of (assumed) tricks to prevent the infamous errors viz:
- setting up and editing multi-level playlists, before inserting MP3s into the lists
- entering MP3s twice, deleting the double entries immediately afterwards and adding more in other playlists
- setting up a large amount of files to transfer (I gave it about 500MB tonight)
in short anything else than dragging a single playlist into emplode and synching before applying any maintenance. In addition:
- running (ripping) AudioCatalyst while synching!

Especially AC and Emplode fighting for resources used to be a certain manner to cause a crash.

The Good News
Emplode/Emma didn't crash at all. Emplode pumped about 100GB over to Emma, with AC ripping a full CD without error. I haven't managed to transfer that much in one go over USB, in months.

The Bad News
The process became terribly slow though: one disk write (rattle in Emma) every 3-5 seconds; Windows taking 20-30 seconds to just open the Start menu. This may have been one of the usual W98 instabilities, that has nothing to do with emplode or USB use, though. I killed W98 in the end; Emplode/Emma are now checking disk integrity. You'll have to wait for results from others to make sure that it is just W98 tying itself into a knot. I'll try it more later this week.

The synch failures have definitely been eliminated. Congratulations. What did you do? Was it USB resources or emplode/Emma logic?

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)

Even though I never got this bug on my system (and therefore couldn't test it for you), I'm still curious as to what you think the cause of the bug might have been. Is it something about the USB drivers or what?

I believe it is something to do with the low level USB support in Windows 98 in conjunction with the hardware/firmware USB support on some motherboards. This explains why it happens only on Windows 98 and only on some machines.

In the end I noticed that whilst one operation failed the USB continued working well enough to stop the synchronisation process and restart the player. It then dawned on me that waiting a little while and then repeating the request would probably work too, and it did. This is the solution employed in the latest version of emplode.

There is a limit on the number of times it retries so if the error occurs again then I'd be interested in seeing a log file.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Got no answer when I asked for the trial version Thursday night.

I think there may be a problem with your email system. I sent you several emails on Thursday night, one of which contained the new version of emplode. I also sent several chase up emails. These left our mail server so must have arrived at one of your MX hosts. Have you received any email from me recently?

(I would have sent this in private email, but obviously this may not have worked :-)

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

I think there may be a problem with your email system. I sent you several emails on Thursday night, one of which contained the new version of emplode. I also sent several chase up emails.

I recently corresponded with Henno via direct e-mail and had no problems.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. In the past, I've seen problems crop up that were specific to the communication between one pair of e-mail servers. For instance, a couple years ago, I ran into a problem where my ISP's mail server refused to talk to one of my friend's ISP's mail servers. But he could send and receive mail from anywhere else in the world just fine. And I could do the same. And in fact, the problem only happened unidirectionally- he could send mail to me, I just couldn't send mail to him. The odd part was that my ISP kept re-trying for two days before bouncing the message back to me, so I never knew there was a problem until it was too late.

Someday, I'd like to see a piece of technology that actually works correctly all the time.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Have you received any email from me recently?

Nope
There must be something seriously wrong then. I'll contact you directly via e-mail (with back-up answer address )

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)

There must be something seriously wrong then. I'll contact you directly via e-mail (with back-up answer address )

Just in case anyone is interested it appears that emails sent in a certain way from empeg made Henno's anti-spam features junk the email. I've now altered our mail configuration and this shouldn't happen again.

I apologise to Henno for accusing him of having a faulty email system. :)


--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

I apologise to Henno for accusing him of having a faulty email system. :)

Even better is that this confirms that spam protection works

(Who wished there was technology that worked ?)

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)

Even better is that this confirms that spam protection works

Not really, a spammer can easily ensure that the envelope From address matches the email header From address (or possibly just that the envelope From address is valid). Maybe some of them just aren't clueful enough :)

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)