Karma lockups during Ethernet sync

Hi,

I bought a Karma as I needed a portable player and was very happy with my empeg
for many years. The Ethernet connectivity made it even more attractive for me,
as I only run Linux on my computers.

Well so much for the theory...

I first had the "Ethernet not working" problem which was "fixed"
by replacing the switch.

When using Ethernet for syncing new music/deleting tracks, the current
Karma firmware (1.68) locks up very often. I first thought it might be a
jemplode problem and contacted Mike Schrag. He was very helpful in trying to
find the problem (Thanks a lot!).

It turned out jemplode does nothing wrong as the Karma locks up "randomly".
Also "protocol errors" shouldn't lock up a device anyway. When I put the Karma
under load (play music while syncing), it locks up almost every time.
I then tried RMM over Ethernet and I locks up, too!

Is this a know issue, meaning it will be fixed? It's very annoying
if you can't really sync new music to the Karma.

Bye,
Thomas

Hmmm... When you upgraded did you reformat the hard drive? While it should not matter, it might be worthwhile to reformat the player. Do you notice any other symptoms - drive clicking, spinning, unusual graphics or UI results? Lastly, are the files you are using error free, what format are they, bitrate and proper tags? This will help in efforts to reproduce the problem. Thanks.

Thanks for your reply. The player/HDD is completely healthy, I didn't notice any other glitch.
It never locked up during normal usage. All the files are mp3, error free
and properly tagged. The bitrate is varying.

I didn't reformat the drive after upgrading the firmware. But let me put it this way:
I was unable to reproduce the same lockup using RMM over USB.
The problem feels like a race condition/locking issue when using Ethernet.

In the beta phase I seem to recall there was a problem with some of the karmas locking up on long ethernet transfers. If I recall correctly, the problem would only happen on ethernet and not on USB. The problem is that it only happened on certain 10/100 ethernet switches and not on others. I think it was related to a minor timing difference between the switch's electronics and the ethernet electronics in the Karma itself. It was one of the problems that I spent a lot of time working with the Rio folks trying to solve. We went back and forth a lot and it came down to the wire near the end of the beta phase. I don't recall whether we narrowed the problem down and solved it in time for final PCB production, but the fix (again, if I recall correctly) required replacing a component on the PCB with one of a different value. Or perhaps adding a component bridging something, I don't remember exactly. I remember doing this myself on at least one of the beta Karmas, it was a real PITA, the components on those boards are hella tiny.

Hm. Memory coming back a bit... it wasn't specifically during long ethernet transfers. It was something related to temperature.

If the Karma was cold, all was well. Then if I did a long USB transfer (filling the entire player from scratch, let's say), thus warming up the player, then after that if I tried to connect with ethernet, it wouldn't connect at all, the ethernet simply wouldn't work, it failed the initial 10/100 handshaking with the switch. You'd get a "steady" traffic light on the ethernet plug instead of a blinking traffic light.

I could be mixing up two separate problems here in my head, so someone from Rio correct me if I'm wrong...

Get ready to sync in the fridge?

Quote:
Is this a know issue, meaning it will be fixed?

It's widely-reported. We haven't got round to looking into it yet.

Peter