Weird emphatic behaviour

I installed alpha3 a while back and have tried to get emphatic working a couple of times in the car but with no results. Hijack has it as an option, but when I choose it nothing seems to happen. Then, I press the knob to get the menu and all I get is the menu border. Pressing again gets the Hijack menu but without emphatic.

So, tonight I figure I'll have a proper play, check the config, check it's on the player etc. Whilst I have come across some interesting Hijack options that I didn't know about before I haven't actually turned anything up except I had EXEC set instead of EXEC_ONCE when loading the app.

Anyway, I've rebooted and tried again. Same thing so I've tried getting into Hijack again and something different has occurred.

A long time ago, I don't know how I did but I was sure I'd done it, I managed to get emphatic to come up with it's name across the screen in crazy writing and then a scrolling image of people and names. Couldn't get it again and started to think I had imagined it. But no, I've got it again, only the menu frame is in the foreground and this is scrolling past very fast in the background.

Oooh, it's changed to the next track, I'm now in track mode and the bottom left of the display still shows the scrolling image but 2 pixels high and 4 pixels wide. If I change the info mode it is still doing it. If I press the knob again I'm back to madly scrolling images. It's going too fast to see but it loooks like either a cartoony skeleton or Homer Simpson (or both?).

Technical stuff: I got a Mk2 running v3a3 developer - Hijack 347. My config looks like this:

[hijack]
;@EXEC_ONCE /usr/local/bin/emphatic -m 2 -f 1
;@exec_once /usr/local/bin/empegVNC
;disable_bassboost_FM=1
volume_boost_FM=5
volume_boost_AM=5
;volume_boost_AUX=0

I know some of that works cos VNC is working.

The question: What's all that about then?

try not running v3a3

Two things about Emphatic:

1. As said before, use software 2.0 final instead of Alpha 3. They changed the fonts in alpha 3 so you won't get any fonts. Not sure if the version of Emphatic that you're using has the upgraded font code.

2. You need to put a pretty large "reservecache" setting in your config.ini for Emphatic to work properly. I had all sorts of problems with Emphatic until I bumped my reservecache:

[startup]
reservecache=48

tony, is your 2. relating to using an emphatic with updated font code on a v3 install, or not using updated font code on a 2.0 install?

I haven't even tried Emphatic on v3. So it's related to using 2.0.

But regardless of which version you use, Emphatic doesn't work well without reservecache, period. It's a separate issue from the font. Even on version 2.0, I've had emphatic come up with a blank rectangle as described unless I have the reservecache set high enough.

Cheers, I'll try that. I only had problems with emphatic when going from v2beta13 to final where I started to notice a delay in track display at the start of tracks and also some slight stuttering occassionally.

Ah. So in my eagerness I now find there is probably an important order to entries in the config.ini?

I stuck it at the beginning thinking that's where startup would most logically sit and now my player is looping through the whole boot sequence repeatedly.

Oh hum .. back to the FAQ.

Oh, forgot to say...

You have to do ;@DC for emphatic, too, or you'll get your player into a weird state where it can never synch. Or you have to remember to shut down emphatic before every synch. See the notes here.

In the case of Emphatic, it's trying to read the song info from the actual song files on the /drive0 partition, so synchs stop working because it can never mount/unmount drive0 while emphatic is running. This includes synchs to update the config.ini file.

Sorry, but I can be a bit thick with all this.

If I include ;@DC with emphatic then that means emphatic will only work in the car dock. As I have a docking station this means that if I want to synch I'll have to do it out of the dock (like I currently have to do upgrades) OR fool the player into thinking it is on AC power by sticking something (safe) in the power socket OR close down emphatic before I synch.

[Edit] That was a question BTW. Re-reading made it look like I was telling you something you already know.

I used to have to do the last option every time I wanted to synch but it is so rare these days that I generally forget, have to wait for the error message as a reminder, close emphatic and then synch properly.

I was only going to spend a couple of hours on my PC tonight and now it's past 11pm.

I'm now back to where I started before all this fiasco began. I installed v2, removed the [startup] from config, reinstalled 3a3, along with Hijack, emphatic, VNC.

Does the position of the [startup] section in the config.ini make a difference? I think I'm gonna risk putting it elsewhere with a smaller setting and see what happens.

Right, final post for the night.

ReserveCache=32 down near the end of the config.ini (does this mean it now gets ignored?) caused no probs so I've upped it to 48 again. Still no problem except emphatic still don't work. Guess I either go back to v2 or wait patiently .... decisions, decisions.

I am with my family for Thanksgiving tonight and just wanted to pop onto the board real quick... So I don't necessarily have time to figure out all the problems being presented... Suffice it to say, emphatic 1.10 (I hope you're using that version) is a lot buggier than I'd like it to be. I don't believe the most recent version causes problems with syncs anymore, or at least I got rid of the problem where it kept config.ini open.

The screen with Homer Simpson at Homerpalooza is the emphatic easter egg/about screen, which appears if you hold down the knob while the "On" option is selected in the emphatic menu. If that was triggered *without* holding down the knob, then it's possible emphatic was just really slow due to not having enough memory.

The ReserveCache option needs to be in the [Startup] section of your config.ini. So putting it "at the bottom of config.ini" doesn't help if the [Startup] section isn't at the bottom.

Anyway if these suggestions don't help, please concisely state what your problems are now and I'll try to take a look at them in the next day or two if I have a break from Thanksgiving festivities... Or wait for my next version, which I am completely rewriting the internals of to hopefully address some of the bugs.

As my home dock persuades the player that it is in the car, any time I need to sync, I have just got used to telnetting in first and doing a kill -9 11.

Fear not. I am putting ReserveCache in a [startup] section. It's just that when I put it at the start of the config it buggered things up. It's now at the end and the player is working fine.

Same problems with emphatic, though. I have ReserveCache set to 48 and I still get just the menu outline but can't see the options.

Emphatic issues (starting from track info mode) - choose emphatic off Hijack menu.
Track info shows but is static even though track still plays.
Push knob button first - nothing. No buttons work except for pause (and off).
Off and on gets me back to track info and buttons work but emphatic no longer loaded.

Looks like I'm gonna have to be doing a few tests of different scenarios. That's my sad Friday evening in alone sorted.

That was a question BTW. Re-reading made it look like I was telling you something

To be a jerk, it's easier to identify questions when they end with a question mark.

Is this on player v2 or v3? The font file format changed in v3 and I haven't yet released a version of emphatic that uses the new vfdlib that supports v3 fonts. I would not expect the currently released version of emphatic to work on v3.

Errrr ... v3. Now that I know about the extra settings in the conifg.ini I'm gonna try them on v2 as well to see if that sorts out the delay I was finding with displaying track names.