I am having trouble getting beta 9c to sync over USB from my PC.
I have not tried syncing since the weekend I got my empeg (running 8b I think). I bought myself a PC for the sole purpoe of syncing with my empeg so don't know alot about them - I'm a Mac user of 13 or so years with some Unix knowledge (but not that much!)

The only things installed on the PC are Win 98SE, a 10/100 Genius ethernet card, PCMacLan connect and Fifa 99. The area I suspect the problem lies is in the 2 CH Products gamepads I have been using with Fifa 99 used with CVGS on a Mac which I though I'd try out. I have removed these but with no luck.

I can only sync if I reboot the empeg, and emplode and then just upload a single playlist or a single track - anything more will cause the sync error. I will now get the sync error however much I upload until I reboot the empeg and emplode again.

All my mp3's have been created on the Mac and either copied onto the PC via PC MacLan or burnt into ISO-9660 format CDs on the Mac and then mounted on the PC. Syncing over serial works, but I am in the middle of cataloging around 9Gbs of mp3s and would rather not have to do that ;-)

If there is any more info I have left out please let me know. I'm sure I have something set wrong rather than a 'bug' as no one else seems to be reporting problems.

Many thanks for your help

Phil

I'm sure I have something set wrong rather than a 'bug' as no one else seems to be reporting problems.

It's unlikely that you've got anything set wrong. There aren't really any options you can set for the USB port. About the only thing you can do is to go into the Devices panel (Control Panel/System) and see if there are any "little yellow boo-boo icons" (official Microsoft name) next to the USB ports.

It could very well be a bug, so make sure to report all the details to bugs@empeg.com.

Maybe it's something silly, like an illegal character in one of the file names?


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

...You might have an interrupt conflict with your usb port.. try this: click on start/settings/control panel, double click on system, double click on the first item under system devices, and click on something which (i think) reads interrupts, or IRQ ... see if the USB is on the same number as something else... (sorry, don't have the exact directions here - I'm running windows 2000)
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

Phil,

I had enormous problems with 9b, trying to upload several gigabytes of MP3s.. Rob then sent in interim release that worked much better; it is probably the one that made it into 9c. While the interim worked beautifully, I had again a few windows errors from emplode with an error code very similar to your's: my synchs bombed out in stage 5 with code 0x800703e4.

I have a hunch that it may have something to do with Windows resources. Whenever I do anything else on the PC, emplode bombs out. It also stopped shortly after I left it for a large upload. This could have been when energy saving settings took over. Last time I tried, I kept emplode in the foreground; didn't run anything else; and kept Windows from going asleep by moving the cursor about, every few minutes. And see . . . emplode uploaded some 40 tracks without error .

Anyone with similar experiences?

Henno

Henno
# 00120

This is interesting.

I've seen clever programs that disable the screen saver while performing timing-intensive operations. I don't think that putting the monitor into "sleep" mode would sap resources, but some high-rez screen savers can. Putting the CPU or the hard drive into "sleep" mode definitely would crash a synch.

Mike: Does Emplode disable the screen saver during an upload? Is there a way it can disable sleep mode during an upload?



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

I don't think that putting the monitor into "sleep" mode would sap resources, but some high-rez screen savers can.

I'm not using any screensavers (Windows is set to 'never'). The only thing that happens is that after 15 minutes of inactivity
1) VDU
and
2) the disks are switched off

on the 'other' stuff that I used to run
I've mostly run Netscape when emplode crashed. Could interrupts (USB vs ISDN-support) be causing emplode to crash?

Henno

Henno
# 00120

Thanks for all your help. I followed down the line of your various advices (?) but nothing changed. But Tony, you hit the nail right on the button with the illegal characters suggestion.
I guess this comes from not knowing enough about Windows! It had just been bad luck that every track I had tried to upload was failing. I am uploading around 150Mb in the background whilst writing this so everything seems to be running properly. The biggest problem I have know is that I've just burnt 9Gb of mp3s onto CDs ready to transfer onto my empeg and loads of them are gonna have illegal characters - I just wasted another weekend!

If someone can point me to a list of illegal characters I would be very grateful.

All was looking great until I tried a few more syncs....

It took three attempts to create a new playlist at the root level, getting the same error each time. Each time I rebooted emplode but left the empeg in standby (it seems to have more problems if the empeg isn't in standby. Third attempt all worked fine.

Many thanks for your help on this one. Certainly half the problem is solved and is, as I suspected, entirely my own doing, but the rest is still elluding me.

Phil

Having forgotten to hit send on my previous post - there was about a hour between them...

Done some more testing having eliminated the illegal characters bit.

Just found another bug but this time in my mains wiring - turned on my desk lamp and the following appeared "copyright [c] abbahome inc. denis wu s121809027" strange, but a little of topic.

Uploading a track direct from a CD will fail *most* of the time. It does sometimes work, but can't yet determine any pattern. Copying this file(s) to the desktop and then syncing works *every* time - as far as I can tell in an hours testing.

The CDs have been burnt using Toast 3.5.3 on a Mac as a ISO-9660 volume. Is there anything this could be doing to screw with what Windows sees? The only thing I can think of is that I chose to allow Macintosh names when burning the CD. I'll try disabling this and buring another but I guess I'll lose some file naming info so I must give this one some thought. Will try it tomorrow evening.

Or any other way of making cross platform CDs that that emplode will understand?

Many thanks

Phil

PS - Tony. Thanks for your help a few weeks back on sending next previous track commands to the empeg - just got round to trying it - works a treat.

The only thing that happens is that after 15 minutes of inactivity 1) VDU and 2) the disks are switched off

Seems to me that could cause a synch failure. Not so much the display, but the disks. Try turning off the disk spindown feature and see if your problems go away. It's unlikely Netscape or interrups with the ISDN adapter.

-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

If someone can point me to a list of illegal characters I would be very grateful.

Well, whenever you try to create a goofy file name in windows, it shows a dialog box saying that you can't name a file with the following characters:

\ / : * ? " < > |

The reason is that these all have special values when used at the DOS command line. For example, a backslash is a directory separator, a forward slash indicates a parameter, and the vertical bar is the pipe command.

The biggest problem I have know is that I've just burnt 9Gb of mp3s onto CDs ready to transfer onto my empeg and loads of them are gonna have illegal characters - I just wasted another weekend!

Not if you burned ISO-9660 compatible CDs and didn't override the filename restrictions. By default, ISO-9660 filenames can only contain letters, numbers, and the underscore character. This is to prevent just this sort of error. The reason it's so restrictive is that they're not just targeting mac/windows compatibility, but Unix, Sun, etc. They wanted to make sure that all files worked on all systems.

What illegal characters would have been in your file names?

-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

turned on my desk lamp and the following appeared "copyright [c] abbahome inc. denis wu s121809027" strange, but a little of topic.

Sounds like you've got a piece of software installed on the system that is registered to a bloke named Denis Wu, whose registration number is 121809027. I wonder if he knows you're running his copy of the program? Why the software would display its splash screen when your system gets a power spike, though, is incomprehensible to me.

Uploading a track direct from a CD will fail *most* of the time. It does sometimes work, but can't yet determine any pattern. Copying this file(s) to the desktop and then syncing works *every* time - as far as I can tell in an hours testing.

Ah, of course. The operating system is highly tuned to speed up hard disk operations, but not operations on removable-media drives such as CD's, floppies, or Zip drives. Emplode is very timing-sensitive, and the slowdowns from the CD drive must be what messed it up. Whenever I do anything with any kind of removable media, I copy my files to the hard disk before performing any operations with them. It's a good rule of thumb to follow for any kind of file on any intel PC.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

What illegal characters would have been in your file names?

For some reason I have loads of track with '?' in! Must just be the music I listen to.

I also seemed to having trouble with a '-' which appears in a surprising number of artist names. This was improved by copying it to the hard drive.

Many thanks

Phil

Ah, of course. The operating system is highly tuned to speed up hard disk operations, but not operations on removable-media drives such as CD's, floppies, or Zip drives. Emplode is very timing-sensitive, and the slowdowns from the CD drive must be what messed it up. Whenever I do anything with any kind of removable media, I copy my files to the hard disk before performing any operations with them. It's a good rule of thumb to follow for any kind of file on any intel PC.

I will try uploading a load of stuff tonight from the hard drive and see what happens.

It could, of course, having something to do with the cheap PC I bought - it was only GBP 239!!

Thanks again for the help

Phil

For some reason I have loads of track with '?' in! Must just be the music I listen to. I also seemed to having trouble with a '-' which appears in a surprising number of artist names.

There should be no problem with hyphens in the file names (unless it's a typographical Em Dash rather than a hyphen), but the "?" will give windows absolute fits. Question marks are used as wildcards for filename searches in Wintel systems.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

There should be no problem with hyphens in the file names (unless it's a typographical Em Dash rather than a hyphen), but the "?" will give windows absolute fits. Question marks are used as wildcards for filename searches in Wintel systems.

There are no em dashes in there (at last something in this thread I completely understand!). I tried copying a file with a '?' in it and Windows just errored - I definitely have to rethink my file naming convetions.

Phil

PS: How do you get to spend so much on this BBS???!

Firstly, I'll assume that the error described in the subject of these posts has been a typo. I think it should be 800703e4.

Warning. Technical bit. :)

This error is due to Windows OVERLAPPED IO going wrong. Basically, emplode issues a read request and then waits (with a timeout) for it to complete. In the cases that this error occurs in it appears that Windows has said that the operation is complete but when emplode tries to get the results Windows claims that the operation isn't complete at all.

It may be a bug in emplode but I've been over the code several times as has our new Windows expert (and I'd be happy to send the code to any expert in the area that is reading this now). It is interesting that no-one (to my knowledge - without actively checking) has reported this error on Windows 2000. In fact, I'm suspicious that it may only affect Windows 98 SE.

This error should have nothing to do with funny characters in filenames or reading files off CD or networks. emplode shouldn't be so timing critical that reading files from CD would cause a problem unless you have a very badly written CD driver.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Firstly, I'll assume that the error described in the subject of these posts has been a typo. I think it should be 800703e4

Err yeah! Looked back through the notes I'd written and I typed it in wrong.

Still getting the error though. Tried deleting a bunch of files and had the same error as does deleting one file.

Mike - is the recommended solution Windows 2000?

Many thanks

Phil

...it'd probebly depend on your setup - don't consider win2000 unless you have at least a 200mhz processor/64mb memory/fast hard drive... It'd definately worth considering if you meet these requirements though...
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

Still getting the error though. Tried deleting a bunch of files and had the same error as does deleting one file

My current belief is that it is something to do with power management. Disabling as much as you can in Control Panel (and maybe even the BIOS) might help. If this does solve the problem then I'd like to know so that we can work out why.

Here's a question: If you restart both your computer and your empeg and then do a little synchronise will it fail? Does it only fail on small synchronisations _after_ a long one has already failed during that session?

Mike - is the recommended solution Windows 2000?

It depends what the problem is. I believe that emptool is very good. :)

More seriously though, Windows 2000 should be better at a lot of things. I'll be using it for development as soon as my copy arrives (I'm using NT4 now). According to the woman from Microsoft UK on The Money Programme Windows 2000 is the most reliable OS that Microsoft have ever produced. This may not be saying much. :)

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Windows 2000 so far has worked great for me so far on my Celeron 433 laptop. I had a few sync errors when I first got it all set up, but I didn't bother writing them down. I attributed the errors just to my own mistakes. (Plus the network cable popping out of the x-jack once didn't help when syncing off the network).

The software installs flawlessly in 2000, and the empeg is seen fine connected to USB. 2000 even knows it's a device that needs to be unplugged properly, so empeg-car is another option under the unplug/eject hardware tray icon.

As far as recommending 2000, I recommend it to anyone that can run it. Install it first alongside 98 to migrate, and see what can't be done in 98. After that, you may find you can completly move into 2000, and it is much more stable then 98. Also, it seems to run noticibly faster. (And getting it for free, and about a month ahead of the retail release always helps :-)

Reg 1640, 6gb Blue empeg-car mark 1. SN 00359

2000 even knows it's a device that needs to be unplugged properly, so empeg-car is another option under the unplug/eject hardware tray icon.

This sounds like it might be mildly irritating: Having to select a menu option to unplug your Empeg. Mike: is this necessary? Can the Empeg's USB driver be coded so that it doesn't have that requirement?


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

Well, I just encountered my first sync error in beta 9c, and it seems to lend credence to the timing theory.

Actually, it was my wife who encountered the error when she tried to sync up files that were located on a mounted network drive. The network mount was to another Win98 box on our LAN connected by 10M Ethernet.

She didn't jot down the error number, but she copied the files to the local hard drive, and then synced without any problems.

Corby
SN#320, 6-Gig Blue

...it just tells you that you've unplugged it; you don't actually HAVE to tell it that you're going to unplug first (I never have...)
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

...it just tells you that you've unplugged it; you don't actually HAVE to tell it that you're going to unplug first (I never have...)

Yes, but it then gets all high and mighty about how you shouldn't do so. I'll see if there's any way of getting rid of this message but it's not a major priority.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

...but it then gets all high and mighty...

That's got to be the most perfect description of Windows that I've ever heard.

-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

Heh. The message warns you about the possibility of lockups by removing devices. Oddly enough, the only lockup I have had was from removing my laptop from a dock with another USB host, Cardbus controllers, and a Voodoo3, then redocking. Ripping all of it out it's happy with. Putting it back on the other hand makes it a bit upset.

The warning will pop up if the empeg ever looses power as well, since the computer thinks it's been disconnected.

Reg 1640, 6gb Blue empeg-car mark 1. SN 00359

I'm seeing the stage 5 with error 0x800703e4 as well but after reading 26 messages, I don't think I see even a workaround.
I'm running Win98SE and my syncs are dying nearly every time before completing (leaving songs in the unattached dir, but
no playlists). I just got the empeg, so the only versions of software I've ever tried are 9b and 9c. Is there some other version
I can go back to to avoid this problem?

Is there some other version I can go back to to avoid this problem?

Not really. Synching has never been easy, although 9b was really bad.
Went over my notes again, but cannot find any pattern that predicts synch errors. I may be kidding myself, but I have a gut feel that seperating playlist maintenance from file uploads may avoid errors. I filled up my last 0.5Gb disk space by

1) setting up new playlists first
2) doing a synch
3) uploading the MP3s, making sure W98 isn't going to sleep (gently moving the mouse cursur around every few minutes)
4) staying out of any other W98 activity / resisting to log onto this BBS, reviewing 0x800703e4 error despairs.

BTW. I no longer delete playlists and create new ones in the same synch, and keep uploads limited to 3-4 CDs

Don't know if this avoids the errors, or just minimizes the risks.
My Empeg's 6Gb is full now . Maybe that the problems have been resolved once I have found the extra disk

Henno
# 00120

NB: My errors are not in stage 3, but in stage 5!
Mike, can you let us know what the various stages do?
And, may be, provide info on the synch process? A log report that summarizes what changes have been applied will make controlling the errors a lot easier. Things like: playlists added/changed/deleted and a summary of the MP3s uploaded/deleted (title, album), with time stamp?

> Not really. Synching has never been easy

You say that, but for the majority of users it works fine (or if it doesn't they're choosing not to tell us about it). There seem to be some fairly specific issues which Mike and Roger are looking at closely at the moment. It's not easy when we can't reproduce them on any of our PC's!

Rob