So now that our player software is running on the HSX and it has the ability to rip and encode from CD. Is there a posibility of adding a CDROM to the IDE chain on the Empeg and getting it to rip cd's?
Or is there just not enough memory? Perhaps this could be done real time and not in the backgroud?

Sounds like a next generation feature to me.

Rob

Yeah I was really digging the MKIII design.

Now we know where the efforts went......

Just for the record, the HSX does not run the same software as the car player.

It shares many common pieces of code, and its player-to-PC communication protocol is compatible (Emplode works with both the car player and the HSX), but they are completely different animals.

The HSX has a completely different hardware architecture, so the code has to be very different. Display, attached devices, CPU, memory, file system... everything is different.

The code it shares with the car player is the obvious stuff that would be the same: The playback code, the shuffling code, the playlist management code, much of the visuals, the emplode transfer protocols, etc. It's interesting, when you play with the HSX, to see the occasional "familiar" thing from the car player, on something that's so radically different.

The HSX has a completely different hardware architecture, so the code has to be very different.

Really, I thought Hugo had said the HSX hardware was based on the empeg in another thread. What is different about it aside from support for the extra peripherals? It is still a similar ARM based board with similar specs isn't it? Just curious because I had always assumed they where much more similar than you are making it sound.

-Mike

Really, I thought Hugo had said the HSX hardware was based on the empeg in another thread. What is different about it aside from support for the extra peripherals?

Well, looking at it one way, there's little difference except for the "extra peripherals". But as the extra peripherals include a bigger screen (and attendant richer UI), USB host, CDRW, etc., that is in fact rather a lot. An HSX player binary is about twice the size of a car-player one, and there's no way you could run all those extra features on a car Mk2. Apart from anything else, the HSX needn't keep its disk spun down like a car player does -- so it can swap.

Peter

I thought the CPU was different, too. Guess I was wrong?

It's the SA1110 as opposed to the SA1100. Almost identical - slightly slower (HSX109 is 206Mhz cf 221Mhz for the empeg) but has SDRAM instead of EDO and some other small tweaks.

Mostly the same though. The SA1100 isn't made anymore.

Hugo

I can see it already... with the price drop, people are going to start over clocking their RioCar's!

I don't see why you'd overclock, considering the borderline cooling problems (in some installs) already, but I could see adding some more DRAM if you were going to hack the hardware....

Yeah, good idea, is it possible to add some memory ?

The mk1 could be taken to 16MB (4 chips on the underside of the board) but mk2/2a don't have such facilities; the factory complained that they got solder bridges on the unused pads when flow soldering the through-hole stuff.

Very brave/stupid people could do things like stack ram chips on a mk2a, but you're really have to want 32MB *A LOT* to risk it!

Hugo

... and kernel has to be recompiled to take advantage of additional RAM - it doesn't attempt autodetection, right?

I would think it gets it automatically as a mk1 has 8 meg a mk2 has 12meg and i think the mk2a 16meg

No, it does this on hw revision. No idea why I never put memory size detection into the linux loader, but I didn't get round to it. It may get fixed in a later upgrade.

Hugo

If it knows what memory it got do we need memory detection unless someone fools around with a soldering iron but around here nothing would suprise me.

Probably because Hugo is in the middle of sodering in more chips right now on his

Actually, Hugo's just gone home to pack for CES...