On some OSes dd is required for this sort of thing due to needing to use a block device and the kernel not dealing very well with writes not matching block sizes. cp and cat (well, the shell's output redirection algorithm, technically) assume that they can write as much or as little as they want in each individual operation, but with dd you can specify that the block size be a specific size. Linux has none of these problems, though, nor do any other modern Unices I can think of.

My first encounter with Unix was back in 1991/1992 when I was using Sun workstations to write Linux root/boot floppies. Maybe the Sun Unix at the time required the use of dd and that it why I became fixated on it ?

I wouldn't be surprised.

Incidentally, that's not too far off from my experiences, except it was DECstations for me.

These adapters looked pretty basic, so I went with one from Hong Kong on eBay (see here) for less than £3 delivered. Although it is not as neat as having one the right size for mounting on the drive tray, I'm happy with it. Mine is stuck on to the drive tray with some sticky back velcro (hook and loop) and a cable tie. Its definitely not going anywhere

dmesg on my Empeg shows:
(...)
hda: TOSHIBA MK4025GAS, ATA DISK drive
hdb: SanDisk SDCFB-256, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: TOSHIBA MK4025GAS, 38154MB w/0kB Cache, CHS=4864/255/63
hdb: SanDisk SDCFB-256, 245MB w/1kB Cache, CHS=980/16/32
(...)
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1
(...)
attempt to access beyond end of device
03:44: rw=0, want=2, limit=0
dev 03:44 blksize=1024 blocknr=1 sector=2 size=1024 count=1

I think the last part (beyond end of device) is related, I'm not too sure.

Mark, I'm not sure whether you've had time to have another look at the Hijack code for your idea (here), but I'm ready to try it out whenever you are.

I've attached the output of hdparm from /proc/ide/hda/identify on my player. I don't see a 'Power-Up In Standby feature set' clause in there. Guess I should have checked this earlier, eh? Mark, will this setup work or do I need a new drive?

Thought I'd just give a little update. I ran the builder on my little CF card which worked fine but my hard disk doesn't want to be a slave to it. So, I'm back to the CF being a slave. Not a problem, I just symlinked /drive0/var to /drive1/var and noticed some nice benefits. The player is much more responsive when using weblite and playing all tracks in a big shuffled playlist is faster too, though to be fair it was hardly slow before. Rebuilding the database after adding tracks seems about the same as it was before since its still reading from the disk.

I was curious and ran the builder on a Sandisk 'Extreme III' 2GB card I borrowed to see whether it was any better in the Empeg than my standard old 256MB card. The disk stress test results show the data transfer rate to be roughly the same and the seek times to be just 0.2ms faster. So looks to be the IDE bus of the Empeg that is the limit rather than the speed of the card.

So, is it actually worth making a HD+CF Hybrid? Definitely not unless you use weblite a lot. But it kept me amused for a little while on a damp weekend

I stuffed a single 8GB card (safely setting aside my working 60GB disk) and while it boots and works it just will NOT connect to emplode. Serial? Fine. TCP? No worky. Very odd. It's been a long time since I've played with the EMPEG so I'm probably missing something obvious.

Anyway, fun fiddling awaits.

Look up the IP address that the empeg is using, on the "About" screen from the main empeg menu.

Then tell Emplode to connect to that "specific address".

Also, if Hijack is installed, then the player has to be in "AC/Home" mode for this to work.

Cheers

Arg. It's not getting an IP. If I pop in the 60GB disk, no problem.

I installed this in the usual manner: flashed the builder image, let it run. Flashed the release dev image and booted.

I can put music on it using the serial port, not a problem. It plays and everything is super peachy. Just slow to load music and I cannot get the web UI setup.

Anway, not a huge issue. Mainly doing this for chuckles.

Oh, and the adpater is ye olde cfdisk.2g from pc engines. Tried with and wihtout the jumper (just soldered the gap). I'm not sure which way to go with a single disk setup, since I've seen some devices you jumper and some you do not. Either way it boots and works, just no TCP action.

I got it to get an IP once and emplode saw it but crashed opening the database. A reboot and the IP was lost, never to be seen again.

I'm wondering if the flash card or adapter might be fuxored. I've upgraded disks of the spinning variety and never had this issue, and have used thses sorts of adapters in other projects so I'm kinda suspecting hardware problems at this point.

Isn't progress wonderful!

When we have affordable 64GB cards then my empegs are going solid state.

I already have two empegs with dual-16GB cards. When the 32GB cards get close to $100 or so, I'll replace one card in each empeg with 32GB, and populate two more empegs as well.

16+32 = 48GB, which is great for our needs here!

Cheers

I need about 50GB and I'd rather not have two drives, hence the desire to wait for the 64s.

SHDC to CF Adapter for your CF to IDE Adapter

32GB CF cards are now US$134 on eBay.

Not quite cheap enough, but getting there..

Why would you want to get an SDHC to CF adapter and use SDHC for this purpose? CF costs less and has greater capacity.

Not in Australia when I just so happened to be looking today. Not by much though and after you buy the adapter you'd be square at best most likely.

http://www.pricespy.com.au/cat_17.html

Hm. Odd. You'd think that relative pricings would more-or-less be the same.

Hence the title of the post being "Adapter Mania".

I just ordered one of these:
http://www.memoryc.com/transcend/ts64gssd25-m.html

to replace my single 40GB harddisk, I better hope it works!

Will let you know how it goes...

sooo, did the 64gig ssd do the trick?

i think i've got the general idea now, soo, to summarise..

i need one ide to cf or ssd adaptor, one large card (i have a mk2a) or two, and to possibly remove a resistor (r1) and jump it?
that in itself seems fine and i'm able to do that, but, are any system changes required (operating system / driver i mean), cos that i ain't good at!

Hugh

First, there are two laptop hard drive attachment standards, PATA and SATA. PATA is being displaced by SATA, but the empeg requires PATA.

If you bought a PATA SSD, you'd be good to go. It works just like a magnetic spindle hard drive.

If you bought a SATA SSD, you'd need a SATA to PATA adapter, which I don't think are (yet) small enough to fit inside an empeg case. Basically, don't do that.

If you want to go with CF cards, you just need a CF to PATA adapter, which are cheap. I got the ones mlord recommended and they work great. The resistor removal is specific to that particular adapter. Another one might have different issues, but it should all be fairly straightforward.

So there are no tweaks or changes to the operating system needed in order for CF/SSD drives to work in the empeg?

You just plug them in, run the builder and the upgrader, and it Just Works?