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#294902 - 11/09/2007 13:45 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: mlord]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
Just dug out my serial Lead (and found a PC with com port!) the kernel is reporting ide0 as 0x000-0x007,0x038. Before i crack the lid on my spare player do you know how cs0 & cs1 are connected?
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Mk2a 64mb 60gb

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#294903 - 11/09/2007 14:26 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: russell]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
Just dug out my serial Lead (and found a PC with com port!) the kernel is reporting ide0 as 0x000-0x007,0x038. Before i crack the lid on my spare player do you know how cs0 & cs1 are connected?


They come from pins 12,13 of one of the PEEL 18CV8-25 chips --> basically an EEPROM programmed by Patrick to handle the address decode logic. I suspect we could just bypass that for the second pair of IDE, and connect directly to, say, A31,A30 or something --> need to find an unused address block.

-ml

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#294904 - 11/09/2007 14:37 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
Quote:
Just dug out my serial Lead (and found a PC with com port!) the kernel is reporting ide0 as 0x000-0x007,0x038. Before i crack the lid on my spare player do you know how cs0 & cs1 are connected?


They come from pins 12,13 of one of the PEEL 18CV8-25 chips --> basically an EEPROM programmed by Patrick to handle the address decode logic. I suspect we could just bypass that for the second pair of IDE, and connect directly to, say, A31,A30 or something --> need to find an unused address block.

-ml


Mmm.. it looks more complex than all that now that I've traced some other inputs to that chip.

I think the easiest bet might be to take over the USB chip select, which comes out on pin 16 from that same PEEL chip. Nobody uses USB anyway, so no great loss. So pin 16 from the PEEL could be used as CS0 for the second IDE pair. And both IDE pairs could just share the existing CS1 signal, which is mostly just a write-only thing anyway (minor s/w mods reguired to IDE driver to never read from ALTSTATUS or CTL registers).

Or, one could add an external NAND chip (or similar) to use, say, A10, to separate the two IDE ports while using the existing CS0/CS1 signals.


Edited by mlord (11/09/2007 14:37)

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#294905 - 11/09/2007 14:47 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31602
Loc: Seattle, WA
You guys are scary, you know that?

And I mean that in the best possible way.
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Tony Fabris

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#294906 - 11/09/2007 14:48 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
Quote:
Just dug out my serial Lead (and found a PC with com port!) the kernel is reporting ide0 as 0x000-0x007,0x038. Before i crack the lid on my spare player do you know how cs0 & cs1 are connected?


They come from pins 12,13 of one of the PEEL 18CV8-25 chips


(the one closest to the CPU, by the way).

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#294907 - 11/09/2007 14:58 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: mlord]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
yeap just traced them back myself, now i wonder if the 2nd ide channel chip selects from the MK1 are still programmed into those 18cv8's?
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Mk2a 64mb 60gb

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#294908 - 11/09/2007 15:04 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: tfabris]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
Quote:
You guys are scary, you know that?


Hey, at least they aren't playing with a seemingly lethal home-made laser inches from your face...

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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday

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#294909 - 11/09/2007 16:22 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: russell]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
yeap just traced them back myself, now i wonder if the 2nd ide channel chip selects from the MK1 are still programmed into those 18cv8's?


No, those two signals got reassigned to the ethernet chip in the Mk2(a) units.

-ml

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#294910 - 22/09/2007 09:41 Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid.. [Re: mlord]
sein
old hand

Registered: 07/01/2005
Posts: 893
Loc: Sector ZZ9pZa
Quote:
Quote:
Do you anticipate releasing this newer version of Hijack anytime soon, Mark?

I might just get an adaptor (configure it for slave) and a low-capacity CF card...

Yeah, I hope to sit down with it again over the weekend to iron out the kinks and add the Hijack menu support for controlling the feature. Whether I release it for others depends on whether anyone else is going to use it or not.

If you want it, then get yourself a CF-IDE adapter board, configure it as SLAVE, and install it in your player. Then get a small (or huge, whatever) CF card for it, and let me know you're ready to try it.

While my Empeg is apart (drive died) I ordered a CF-IDE board to have a CF+Disk Hybrid. I use my tuner a lot and think it'll be a great idea to have Hijack manage booting off CF - having the player database in fast CF is pretty nice too.

Mark, is the code mature enough to go be released? My CF stuff should arrive next week hopefully.
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Hussein

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#294911 - 22/09/2007 10:44 Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid.. [Re: sein]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Do you anticipate releasing this newer version of Hijack anytime soon, Mark?

I might just get an adaptor (configure it for slave) and a low-capacity CF card...

Yeah, I hope to sit down with it again over the weekend to iron out the kinks and add the Hijack menu support for controlling the feature. Whether I release it for others depends on whether anyone else is going to use it or not.

If you want it, then get yourself a CF-IDE adapter board, configure it as SLAVE, and install it in your player. Then get a small (or huge, whatever) CF card for it, and let me know you're ready to try it.

While my Empeg is apart (drive died) I ordered a CF-IDE board to have a CF+Disk Hybrid. I use my tuner a lot and think it'll be a great idea to have Hijack manage booting off CF - having the player database in fast CF is pretty nice too.

Mark, is the code mature enough to go be released? My CF stuff should arrive next week hopefully.


Mmm.. When I last played with it, I was having some difficulty with the "initialization" part -- how to tell Hijack to memorize to the CF, as opposed to running normally with a combo of CF-at-boot and HD-for-tunes.

All nicely doable, but I stopped at that point. There's a chance I might dig it out and hack at it one more time, though.

Cheers

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#294912 - 23/09/2007 07:36 mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: mlord]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
Hi,
I've successfully found a way to have a 2nd ide channel on a mk2 player without physically modifying the player in any way.

I've taken the GPIO pin assigned to IDERESET which is on pin 1 of the IDE cable, and used it to multiplex the two chip select lines by placing a quad 2 input nor gate on one dual CF adapter and a quad 2 input NAND gate on the other. ( It should be possible to make this modification on the ribbon cable, but there's little point)

IDERESET is only used to detect a drive refusing to start due to thermal constraint, my modified kernel retains this functionality if a normal HD is used.

Attached is a boot log.

I've still got a problem with the IRQ code to resolve and i'm currently waiting for some CF cards before I can progress much further.

R.


Attachments
303789-cf.txt (495 downloads)

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#294913 - 23/09/2007 11:15 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:

I've still got a problem with the IRQ code to resolve and i'm currently waiting for some CF cards before I can progress much further.

R.


Turn on the "serialize" flag for both IDE "interfaces" in ide.c (equivalent to the kernel command line flags ide0=serialize ide1=serialize.

-ml

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#294914 - 23/09/2007 11:55 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: mlord]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
Thanks for the pointer, I've given it a try but still get this message intermittently on boot

Partition check:
hda:hda: set_geometry_intr: status=0x58
show_message("0000.0 hda: err: set_geometry_intr")

I've only got tiny CF cards at the moment so i'm not sure if that makes a difference.
_________________________
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#294915 - 23/09/2007 12:21 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
Major_Sarcasm
member

Registered: 28/08/2003
Posts: 149
Loc: Isle of Wight, UK
*watches thread in fascination*

Excuse the noob question, but does this mean that we could be looking at a quad-equipped el cheapo-cf empeg in the not too distant future?
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Steve

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#294916 - 23/09/2007 12:39 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
Thanks for the pointer, I've given it a try but still get this message intermittently on boot

Partition check:
hda:hda: set_geometry_intr: status=0x58
show_message("0000.0 hda: err: set_geometry_intr")

I've only got tiny CF cards at the moment so i'm not sure if that makes a difference.


That still points to the serialize problem.

Another issue to be solved (if necessary) is how master + slave devices interact at power-on reset time.

Normally, the master+slave device pair talk to each other at power-on, because the master device is supposed to report the slave's condition to the host system when later asked for it.

But here, there are two masters and two slaves sharing those control lines. I'm really unsure as to what they're all going to do.

Cheers

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#294917 - 23/09/2007 13:40 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: mlord]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
I inserted the line
hwif->serialized = 1;
into "static void init_hwif_data" in driver/block/ide.c

I'm a bit short of time at the moment, I'll take a better look later.

As far as i can tell the master/slave communications are done over the pdiag and dasp signals and that these signals are not used by the host, if that is the case then there traces can simply be cut by the header on the CF adapter, to isolate the two master/slave pairs.

R.


Edited by russell (23/09/2007 14:26)
_________________________
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#294918 - 26/09/2007 14:45 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: FireFox31]
dcosta
enthusiast

Registered: 04/02/2002
Posts: 277
Loc: Massachussetts
http://gadgets.fosfor.se/64-gb-compact-flash-from-samsung
I see it in the picture...
anyone see itfor sale anywhere?


Attachments
303928-060911_1.jpg (541 downloads)

_________________________
__________ davecosta Hijacked 60GB MKIIa 2.0b13

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#294919 - 26/09/2007 17:13 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: dcosta]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Quote:
http://gadgets.fosfor.se/64-gb-compact-flash-from-samsung
I see it in the picture...
anyone see itfor sale anywhere?

Its not available to buy yet. That press release seems to be just announcing that they've made it.

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#294920 - 27/09/2007 22:19 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: tman]
Taym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/06/2001
Posts: 2504
Loc: Roma, Italy
Wow. I thought 64 would be a bit further in time; instead, that's promising. Two 64GB is all I need to get rid of my 100GB HD.
_________________________
= Taym =
MK2a #040103216 * 100Gb *All/Colors* Radio * 3.0a11 * Hijack = taympeg

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#294921 - 29/09/2007 11:59 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: Taym]
FireFox31
pooh-bah

Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
I'd heard that digital cameras respond slower when accessing pictures near the end of 2gb or 4gb drives, whereas they're perfectly fast with pictures at the beginning of the drives. Might this urban legend apply to large CF drives in an empeg? Some kind of delay due to addressing such high address space as 16gb, 32gb, or 64gb?

Still, sounds like fun. $150 for a 16gb Ridata CF card. Still need some time for higher capacity cards to push the price down.
_________________________
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FireFox31
110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set

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#294922 - 29/09/2007 12:20 Re: CF empeg with http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm#2-slot [Re: FireFox31]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
I'd heard that digital cameras respond slower when accessing pictures near the end of 2gb or 4gb drives, whereas they're perfectly fast with pictures at the beginning of the drives.


Huh? Sounds unlikely, unless it's due to a camera dumping *everything* into one big directory (like our beloved empeg does by default..).
Quote:

Might this urban legend apply to large CF drives in an empeg? Some kind of delay due to addressing such high address space as 16gb, 32gb, or 64gb?


No.


Edited by mlord (29/09/2007 12:20)

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#294923 - 04/10/2007 14:17 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
I've just got back from holiday and my new CF cards have arrived. so i have 3 x 8gb + 1 x16gb unfortunately i can't get the 16gb to be either a master or a slave with an 8gb, what ever i do only one of them is detected, what makes it stranger is that an old 8mb card is detected as a slave to the 16gb card.

anyway I have 3 drives working as far a Linux, I now need to make them visible to the player.

I've tried creating a /drive2 and symlinking it to /empeg/fids2 just in case, I didn't really expect it to work, and it didn't!

so I need to come up with some thing else. options i've thought of (but not tried yet) are
1. mount the 3rd drive under /drive0/fids as one of the _* directories
2. mount the 3rd drive as /drive0 and create sym-links into /drive0/fids/
3. set up a raid array

I also need to implement a custom init script to mount the extra drives etc.
_________________________
Mk2a 64mb 60gb

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#294924 - 04/10/2007 15:52 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
Quote:
I've just got back from holiday and my new CF cards have arrived. so i have 3 x 8gb + 1 x16gb unfortunately i can't get the 16gb to be either a master or a slave with an 8gb, what ever i do only one of them is detected, what makes it stranger is that an old 8mb card is detected as a slave to the 16gb card.


Ah.. If this is in the modified setup, then it might be the first sign of this issue (below) appearing:
Quote:

Another issue to be solved (if necessary) is how master + slave devices interact at power-on reset time.

Normally, the master+slave device pair talk to each other at power-on, because the master device is supposed to report the slave's condition to the host system when later asked for it.

But here, there are two masters and two slaves sharing those control lines. I'm really unsure as to what they're all going to do.

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#294925 - 05/10/2007 22:05 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
FireFox31
pooh-bah

Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
Quote:
3. set up a raid array

RAID 5!! Redundancy for when the CF's burn out.

You guys are shockingly smart.
_________________________
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FireFox31
110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set

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#294926 - 08/10/2007 10:17 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
I've resolved the issue of hdb not getting detected, and have created a raid 0.90 linear array, out of the 4 cards. ( only for the music partition). I've symlinked /dev/hda4 to /dev/md0 so the player sees it all as one big disk.

Currently rsync'ing my music.

Once the rsync has finished i'll report back on boot times etc.

I stopped the rsync and rebuilt the array as a raid0 so that the 4 cards are accessed in parallel, so that if the rsync completes ok i can be more confident that the system is stable.

The rsync complete successfully.

The player boots up on AC in 15 seconds compared to 21 seconds for my hard disk based player.

A couple of those 15 seconds are spent assembling the RAID0 array, When I was using a LINEAR array it was a little quicker.


Edited by russell (09/10/2007 07:16)

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#294927 - 08/10/2007 14:33 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: FireFox31]
eagle
new poster

Registered: 08/05/2002
Posts: 14
Loc: London, UK
Let me understand this correctly:
I have a MK1 Empeg with 2x 44-pin hdd cables, are you saying I could buy 2 of these:
http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11630
with 4 CF cards inserted and upon boot the Empeg would see 4 HD drives and make use of them without any software hacks?


Edited by eagle (08/10/2007 16:30)
_________________________
MK1 Empeg - 64GB Transcend SSD (TS64GSSD25-M),
Kenwood KDC-MP6090R (Radio+MP3-CD+Aux In),
Frontier Labs NEX II - 4GB Flash (SanDisk Ultra II),
Frontier Labs NEX IIe - 1GB IBM Microdrive,
Frontier Labs NEX 3 - 1GB SD (SanDisk Ultra II+usb),
Frontier Labs NEX Ia+ - 4GB Flash (owned by wife),
Frontier Labs NEXBlack - will get a 32GB CF card soon \:\)

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#294928 - 08/10/2007 17:20 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: eagle]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
Not quite, the player software only knows how to mount and use 2 disks, you need to find a way to fool it. I've done so by making a RAID array out of the four disks so the player sees them as one big disk, this however requires a custom kernel be built with the raid 0.90 drivers patched in.

Also I tried the adapters you linked too, but couldn't get them to work with 2 cards installed. in the end I ordered 2 off http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11631 and have further modified them to support four CF cards in a MK2a player.
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#294929 - 08/10/2007 17:48 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: russell]
eagle
new poster

Registered: 08/05/2002
Posts: 14
Loc: London, UK
Yes but as far as I understand it you are doing this on a mk2 player, what I meant is, would it work out of the box on a mk1 player or would the software modifications (raid or whatever else) be required too?
Thanks for telling me that the dual adapter didn't work (maybe on a MK1 it would though?).
How did you use 2 single adapters to attach 4 CF cards or am I misunderstanding you?


Edited by eagle (09/10/2007 02:45)

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#294930 - 09/10/2007 07:12 Re: mk2a dual ide channels progress report [Re: eagle]
russell
journeyman

Registered: 22/05/2004
Posts: 50
You are correct I have a mk2 player, so I can't say for sure whether or not the mk1 player application would support 4 drives, I do however think it very unlikely.

I couldn't get those first adapters to work with 2 cards on a PC either so i don't think it's empeg related.

The alternative link I provided was wrong (sorry) it should have been http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11677 a different dual CF adapter, I have 2 of them hence the 4 cards.

I think I should reiterate here that you can't just plug two of these adapters into a mk2 player and expect them to work, I've had to modify each adapter ( cut a couple of tracks and patch in some logic gates) as well as modifying the kernel and hacking the root file system a little to make all this work.
_________________________
Mk2a 64mb 60gb

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#294931 - 10/10/2007 09:50 Re: CF+Harddisk Hybrid.. [Re: gbeer]
avatarTX
member

Registered: 23/08/2000
Posts: 193
Loc: Dallas Texas USA
Quote
"It may not be "new", but PQI makes a 64GB 44-pin IDE 2.5" flash drive. "

I am seeing more and more manufacturers release these now. Samsung makes them too, in sizes from 8GB to 64GB. Of course, the larger drives cost the big bucks right now but I expect in a year or two (maybe when my old fashioned IDE drives need to be replaced anyways?) the price will be more affordable.

These new SSD's seem ideal for the empeg. No moving parts, no worries about bumps in the road, they use less power and generate less heat. Seems perfect to me. My only concern would be how to move all the data to the new drive, is there a util like Ghost or something that can move it.. seeing that its 'Penguin' based?
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Carl Aydelotte Dallas Texas USA empeg MKII 080000506 40gb-green

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