Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release

Posted by: oliver

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 04:23

Hi Mark,
I just tried out the upgrader program, and man that's so much more convenient and faster than the serial method.

However, after playing around with the awesome alpha 11 (thanks Peter & Empeg/Rio!) I noticed half my playlists where missing, and a bunch of items were moved into a different root playlist. I ran emplode, and it saw the same structure. So I ran...

rm /drive0/var/database
rm /drive0/var/database3
rm /drive0/var/tags
rm /drive0/var/playlists

and rebooted the player, and everything was back to normal.

I'm not sure if you've tested going from 2.10 to 3.00 a11, but that's what I did.

Anyways, I love the ethernet upgrader so much I can finally unplug this serial cable!

Posted by: genixia

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 11:07

Fantastic! Thanks!

Now I just need to find a little time to install it.

Posted by: AndrewT

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 11:36

Quote:
The following tuner settings can be tweaked in the config file, in
the "[radio]" section:
"search_level", defaults to ((60*65535)/100)
- min signal strength to stop on when seeking
"ta_switch_level", defaults to ((60*65535)/100)
- min signal strength to change to if there's a TA
"af_switch_level", defaults to ((50*65535)/100)
- min signal strength to consider retune for AF

Thank you empeg guys!

I'd like to clarify my understanding of the parameters here... For instance, am I correct in thinking that the default AF level is equivalent to "af_switch_level=50"?

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 11:58

Looks to me like it defaults to 32767 (and a half).

Posted by: andym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 15:28

Thanks guys, you are both gentlemen and scholars. It seems like you've addressed many issues now, what's left before it becomes beta? I've been using v3 since alpha 3 and since the release at Amersfoort last year with support for 32+MB players it's been very stable with few perceived problems.

Posted by: robricc

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 16:24

Quote:
...what's left before it becomes beta?

I think it was once said that it won't be beta until it works on Mk1 units.

Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 16:48

Aren't the memory requirements too high for an unmodified MK1?

I can see it possibly working on one of the few that has been upgraded to 16mb, but it seems 8mb might be a little slim.

Posted by: andym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 17:19

Ah right, that could be an impossible task, not without having the discs spun up all the time and no cacheing.

Posted by: mrfixit

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 18:38

Ok maybe I am missing somthing but how do you use the ethernet upgrader? I read another post about it but I still can't figure out how to use it on windowz.

Posted by: msaeger

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 18:41

I couldn't figure it out either

Posted by: andym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 26/07/2005 20:50

Under linux I get an incorrect argument error. So I gave up and upgraded in the usual way.

Posted by: oliver

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 27/07/2005 00:48

I installed the latest cygwin distro (took maybe 5 minutes to download and setup everything from the wizard)

Then I copied the upgrader-cygwin.exe into the c:\cygwin\home\oliver folder, opened up the bash terminal, and ran chmod 777 upgrader-cygwin.exe

I then copied the ncftpput.exe into the c:\cygwin\bin directory, and chmod 777 /bin/ncftpput.exe

Then I ran the upgrader with ./upgrader-cygwin.exe 192.168.0.101 "/home/oliver/car2-developer-v3.00-alpha11.upgrade" and everything worked perfectly (well almost, see above post)

After that completed, I also installed the latest hijack with the ncftpput.exe application, and it's really fast!

One thought I had today during my lunch break, was the upgrader is really the simplest program thanks to the lord. It would be really nice if we could figure out a way to integrate it directly into hijack's web interface. I envision a simple textbox with the familiar Browse for file button and you select the .upgrade file. Clicking submit would upload it to the empeg which would gunzip the file, and put everything in the correct place. This would allow us to upgrade our beloved empegs from any network connection without having to setup any software on the computers attached to that network. Thoughts on this? Also, I may be greatly underestimating what the upgrader actually does, but from what I can tell (without looking at the source yet), it seems pretty simple if hijack is already installed. Also, if the upgrader is really as simple as it seems, I already have a great gunzip class for .net, and the FTP class is simple, So if this can't be added into hijack for memory/overhead issues, I'm going to attempt to create a simple .net console app which would mimic the upgrader but not requiring the cygwin install (but it would only run on windows, maybe linux with mono)

Posted by: jarredduq

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - Using Emplode 2.0 - 27/07/2005 02:22

What are the issues using Emplode 2.0 with v3.0a11 Car Player, because Emplode 2.10 is very unstable. 2.0 seems to work okay.

Please advise.....

P.S. Thanks for the new release!!!!!!

Posted by: oliver

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - Using Emplode 2.0 - 27/07/2005 03:15

I don't think there are any major issues, the only thing i can recall 2.10 added was flac/ogg file handling. I don't use either on my empeg so i've always stuck with 2.0 for all my syncing needs.

Posted by: peter

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - Using Emplode 2.0 - 27/07/2005 07:41

Quote:
What are the issues using Emplode 2.0 with v3.0a11 Car Player, because Emplode 2.10 is very unstable. 2.0 seems to work okay.

2.0 will get non-ASCII characters wrong, but if you don't have any music containing accented characters, that might be OK.

Peter

Posted by: Memil

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 27/07/2005 16:45

Just a little tip for your upgrading pleasure with Marks upgrade-program, version 3.1.8 of ncftp (on gentoo at least) seems broken. Just install version 3.1.9 and it works like a charm.

/Fredrik

Posted by: andym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 27/07/2005 17:01

Quote:
Just a little tip for your upgrading pleasure with Marks upgrade-program, version 3.1.8 of ncftp (on gentoo at least) seems broken. Just install version 3.1.9 and it works like a charm.

/Fredrik

Code:


emerge -pv ncftp

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild   R   ] net-ftp/ncftp-3.1.8-r1  +ipv6 0 kB 

Total size of downloads: 0 kB

That explains it.

Posted by: msaeger

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 01:38

Has anyone been able to install hijack using tony's logo edit program ?

I get the error couldn't find product ID ?

I am pretty sure my serial port it working correctly since I used it to install 3.11

Posted by: tfabris

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 01:47

Just by chance, did you happen to try this?:

- pull the power from the empeg.

- run logoedit.

- start the kernel flash procedure.

- do not apply power to the empeg until the screen prompts you to do so.

Posted by: webroach

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 02:05

I had no problems installing HiJack over serial using the LogoEdit program, at least not beyond my own goof-up. Just a thought, but do you have the right COM port selected? I didn't at first, and the install errored out, leading me to discover my mistake.

Posted by: msaeger

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 02:08

Yep it gives the same error whether I plug it in when prompted or before running logoedit.

Posted by: g_man

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 03:10

Can't wait to give it a shot. Thanks for all the continued work.

Posted by: msaeger

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 03:14

Yes I believe I do it does find the player and then I get the couldn't find product id error. This motherboard only has one serial port and I used it to apply the 3.11 upgrade.

Posted by: andym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 17:17

I've had the quietest drive home in a long while. I went out to get petrol and as I arrived at the garage the empeg was playing happily. Once I'd filled up and set off I noticed the music hadn't started. On closer inspection the player software had locked. No response to button presses but it would reboot via Hijack so I knew it wasn't completely screwed. Upon reboot it locked in exactly the same place. A quick look at Vitals revealed a load average of 10+.... not good, it looks like the player was stuck in a loop somewhere. Once I got home I had to player -i it back to good health. I just thought it was worthy of mention because it the latest in a long line of crashes since I put a11 on. The track I was playing is okay because I played it last week under a10 without issue.

It's a shame there isn't a hijack option to start the player with -i in case it happens again. I'd hate to have to drive a long distance and have it happen again.

Needless to say I think I'm going to put a10 back on.

Posted by: Daria

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 18:24

When you insert it, while it's booting, just keep hitting the "right" button on the player. If you manage to fast forward to the next song before whatever it is it's cranky about wedges it again, you're golden. If not, boot again.

I think every 3 alpha has done this for me.

Posted by: ninti

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 18:37

Quote:
When you insert it, while it's booting, just keep hitting the "right" button on the player. If you manage to fast forward to the next song before whatever it is it's cranky about wedges it again, you're golden. If not, boot again.

Ditto. There is a tiny window there to skip to the next song without it getting rehosed, and sometimes I have to reboot it a couple of time before I catch it. And it does appear to be random which song it happens on. Only once have I had to -i the player to get it working again.

Posted by: andym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 19:18

Hopefully it won't happen again but I'll certainly give it a try.

Posted by: msaeger

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 28/07/2005 22:31

So is there some other way to install hijack with windows ?

Posted by: Shonky

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 09:44

I had exactly the same problem as Andy M. I fixed it (after a bit of swearing since I was just about to drive home from work) by pressing the right key very quickly while booting to skip to the next track. I went back to the "dud" track and it played fine (as it always did).

I didn't think to look at the load averages though.

Has only happened once so far.

Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 09:55

Question: when this kind of thing happens, are you using any signal processing (voladjust, crossfade, etc.) that might be involved with the way a specific, intermittently bad, track is being handled?

Posted by: Shonky

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 10:00

Voladjust would have been on low (hijack version not player version)
Crossfade off
EQ using my recently set up AutoEQ
Playlist was short (maybe 100 tracks - all Van Halen

)
Using hijack's "Visual Restore" feature
No 3rd party apps
32MB RAM (stacked method but 100% reliable so far)

Can't think of much else to happen at boot time. The hang happened immediately. No sound at all - not even a little blip and I've run 3.00alpha7/8 ever since they came out without ever seeing the problem.

Posted by: Daria

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 11:37

Quote:
Question: when this kind of thing happens, are you using any signal processing (voladjust, crossfade, etc.) that might be involved with the way a specific, intermittently bad, track is being handled?

I don't have anything interesting enabled, no.

Posted by: frog51

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 13:28

Seems happily stable on my machine...so, I might try and go for the autoEQ thing now.

I have a question - anyone in the UK got the mic already and could loan it to me for a week? If not, I'll try and find one of the ones mentioned in the earlier autoEQ thread...

Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 13:58

Yeah, I've experienced this with all the v3alphas. I haven't had one yet that I couln't fast forward past if the timing wasn't right.

Can also confirm that the tracks involved played normally if played again.

Posted by: andym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 14:05

I have a maplins mic it cost all of 2 quid I think. However I'd still discourage using autoeq unless you're absolutely desperate. I blew a tweeter in the clio because of all the clicks/pops/square waves the thing was putting out. Even a sucessful run left me with a high-pitched whining noise that only went away with a power off reboot.

That said, have fun!

Posted by: frog51

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 14:51

AHhhh - maybe I'll just tweak manually, starting from Brad's figures (well, it is a Scooby so may be close)

Cheers Andy

Rory

Posted by: SonicSnoop

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 29/07/2005 15:59

Ive had great results following Brad B.'s write up on doing the EQ.. Though I think I ended up doing my calculations backwards on accident and it sounded better and kept that...

Posted by: furtive

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 31/07/2005 19:47

Ok, I currently run V2.00 on my empeg. Is there any reason I shouldn't upgrade to this alpha release?

Posted by: jnmunsey

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 05:47

Me too, I haven't really had the desire to spend my free time messing with music. It's sad, I am one of the lucky ones to own an empeg and I really am not that into music, well ever since Nirvana and Gangter rappers destroyed the art..

Anyway, the most important thing for me is stability. Is the Alpha release going to crash on me? I've had maybe one crash in over 4 years on what is now my 2.0 setup..

Thx

Quote:
Ok, I currently run V2.00 on my empeg. Is there any reason I shouldn't upgrade to this alpha release?

Posted by: tfabris

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 12:41

Quote:
Is the Alpha release going to crash on me?

Prior alphas did, for me. I have not yet tried A 11.

Posted by: frog51

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 14:48

Previous alphas were utterly flaky for me, but a11 has been very solid. The only bug I have seen a few times has been the one where playback hangs at the end of a track, and any fwd or rew just moves to the next/prev track but doesn't play it.

A reboot through hijack sorts the issue out straight away, so no biggie.

Posted by: ninti

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 15:06

Quote:
Anyway, the most important thing for me is stability. Is the Alpha release going to crash on me?

Probably. I have been using this for the last half week or so, which amount to maybe 4 or 5 hours of drive time. It has rebooted on me two times, had strange pauses and other wierdness a few times, and frozen (requiring me to pull it out and stick it back in again) once. More problematically, Emplode is still pretty flaky and crashed the first time I have used it, requiring a rebuild of the database. And I suspect, given what other people are reporting, it still can get stuck in a rebooting loop on a particular location.

All of these problems have been in the previous Alphas, and while it is a bit early to say for sure, it seems that Alpha 11 is no less or more stable than 8 was. Which, for me, is fine. I wouldn't go back to V2 for the world, I like a lot of the newer features. And most of the problems seem pretty minor. Emplode being flaky is a bit more problematic, but I rarely change the music on my player nowadays more than once a month and I can deal.

I don't want to sound like I am bitching, I really do appreciate the guys still working on these and understand that anything we get nowadays is just gravy. But if stability is your main concern, I would still say stay away.

Edit: Funny, nearly simultaneous replies with pretty opposite responses. The funny thing is that the problem frog51 reports I haven't seen. So obviously YMMV.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 15:14

This alpha stability thing has been very interesting to me. I've been on v3a8 since its release, and v3a7 before that, and I get reboots once in a blue moon. I think I've had five total spontaneous reboots in more than a year of running the recent alphas. I haven't touched the newer ones yet, partly because they don't add much that I'm interested in (if it ain't broke...) and partly because I'm empegless in my car.

But I just find it very interesting that a lot of people have problems with the alphas and I never have. I wonder what's different about our usage pattern. My collection is in the 7,000 range, I run several third party apps, etc. All my tracks are LAME-encoded mp3s of varying bitrates, most recent ones are preset standard. I have a tuner and use it frequently (or did when it was in my car) but don't make use of any kind of RDS functionality.

Any patterns to the reboots? Certain activities bring them out more than others? Just grasping at straws here, I find it hard to believe something about my empeg unit makes it crash less than other peoples'.

Posted by: peter

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 15:20

Quote:
All my tracks are LAME-encoded mp3s of varying bitrates [...] I find it hard to believe something about my empeg unit makes it crash less than other peoples'.

People is a plural.

Sorry, that's not what I was going to say: as mentioned in the release notes, a certain feature of MP3 headers would crash alphas 8 and 10 straight-out every time. Lame never writes headers with the exact properties necessary to cause the crash; other encoders might well do.

People experiencing crashes and glitches with alpha11 should probably try increasing their ReserveCache.

Peter

Posted by: ninti

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 15:23

Quote:
I think I've had five total spontaneous reboots in more than a year of running the recent alphas.

It's hard to say for sure, but with Alpha8 I averaged maybe one every 8 hours of use or so. I run nothing on the Empeg but Hijack (though it isn't on since I put on Alpha 11, haven't gotten around to it yet). Some of my songs are older encodes, but 90% are Lame as well. I do have a tuner but never use it anymore. And there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the reboots at all. *shrug* I don't know why some people have more problems than others, I agree it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Posted by: Foz

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 15:30

Yeah, "people" is a plural, however just to throw another log on the grammar fire he's using a possessive form of people, not a plural form. If he dropped the possessive, he'd be saying how his empeg crashes more than other people [implying that people crash]. His apostrophe may be mispositioned, but his intent was good

Sorry, the freelance writer in me comes out at the strangest times

To add my two cents on stability, I have been using the v3 branch since the beginning, upgrading to pretty much each release (I skipped a few here and there) and have the occasional stability problem. Lately I've been getting a lot of sigkill errors, but once I get off my butt and send my empeg to the Eutronix guys for a memory upgrade I'm hoping that will end.

My usage pattern? Around 7500 songs or so, high concentration of Ogg format, quality 5 to quality 6 (VBR). Mishmash of mp3's encoded with various settings, mainly LAME --alt-preset-standard except when I was in my experimental phase. Have quite a few CBR 160's as well. I bounce all over the place on my playlists and play up and down my collection. Used the tuner a lot until I got my new headunit, now I just use the empeg as an aux.

I never use emplode. First off, I don't have a windows machine... second off jEmplode does the trick mainly. I'm using 69.0...1 although it drives me nuts with the "one sync per run" bug. I occasionally get hangs when synching. I synch new music frequently, generally once (sometimes twice) a week.

I too would not ever go back to v2. First, I'd be screwed without the ogg support. Second, I have gotten pretty spoiled to the newer look and the newer features.

Oh, I use hijack also (413 currently but I think I need to upgrade).

-- Gary F.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 02/08/2005 17:33

Quote:
I really am not that into music

Heathen!

Quote:
well ever since Nirvana ... destroyed the art..

Sacrilege!

Posted by: frog51

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 03/08/2005 08:04

Reminds me of an amusing argument I regularly have with my brother (mostly to wind him up.)

He was born after Star Wars, so firmly believes Nirvana have been the single most important and influential band ever.

So I like to mention The Beatles, Jimi, Iron Maiden etc etc

I mean, I like Nirvana, but just as another band who put out some good music (and some dross) and then lost their singer in a fairly stupid way

Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 03/08/2005 08:49

All Nirvana did was knock Guns and Roses and Mariah Carey off of the top of the charts. Good job IMO. I was never a big fan of Nirvana, but it didn't matter because there is SO much good music out there, you just need to know where to look.

Posted by: webroach

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 03/08/2005 10:10

Personally, I think when Nirvana was "on" they were amazing. When they weren't, they were pretty average. Overall, I tend to lean more toward the experimental / avantgarde side of music, so I've never listened to the boring crap they churn out for the radio. Frankly, major label (even big independant label) bands have done very little to impress me. Do I greatly enjoy a lot of it? Sure. Impressed? Not generally.

Brad, you especially I think should check out Gridlock. Band is defunct now, but the members still produce music seperately. Their final album "Formless" is especially enjoyable. Challenging at times, but enjoyable.

Posted by: Taym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 03/08/2005 12:25

Really, THANK YOU!

I was stuck with loads of work and could not even test the Alpha10, but I'll definitely go to this as soon as I have a spare minute.
You guys are just great. I know it is just obvious at this point, but I want to say that in 4 years, now, I just think I could never live without my empeg(s) and it is just amazing how after such a long time buying an empeg still proves such a fantastic thing to do! Thank you!

Posted by: Taym

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 04/08/2005 12:51

Ok, I finally tested it!

It is just great that it does not mark songs randomly any longer. Now I can finally mark songs as I need, again!

In re-enabled the AF in the radio, and I only had one frequency change when it was not supposed to occur. I'll test it more during the weekend, when I will have a chance to see if it also changes frequency when instead it is supposed to do so

Anyway, since it can be disabled, any misbehaviour will not create any major problem. Also, I noticed that before changing frequency, I could here some noise.

As to the rest, it really seems stable!

Posted by: JeffS

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 10:52

I never understood what the big deal about Nirvana was- though pretty clearly they were amazing in some way because everyone and their dog credits them with bringing grunge to the forefront and killing 80s pop metal. I've always felt they were loud with overplayed drums and simple riffs. I thought the other groups out at the same time (Pearl Jam and Soungarden specifically) were much more impressive musically.

I was really into Pearl Jam, and I always thought their stuff was better than Nirvana. In fact, "Ten" is still probably in my list of Desert Island CDs, or at least the Bomb Shelter 20, But Nirvana didn't pave the way for PJ did they? I mean, Soundgarden, PJ, and STP pretty much all came out at about the same time. Or am I missing something?

Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 11:13

Different strokes for different folks. Pearl Jam may be better musically, but Eddie Vedders voice makes me want to rend my ears from my head. I uploaded a bunch of Pearl Jam tracks to my empeg a year or so ago because I thought that they should probably be there, but I fast forward through them every time now.

Posted by: frog51

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 11:25

And I am 180 degrees away from you on this one, as I am particularly impressed by Eddie's voice, but reckon Kurt always sounded like a shambolic moaning drunk

Still got all PJ and NIrvanas albums though, as well as Stone Temple Pilots, Temple of the Dog, Soundgarden and various others from that group.

Posted by: JeffS

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 11:29

Quote:
And I am 180 degrees away from you on this one, as I am particularly impressed by Eddie's voice, but reckon Kurt always sounded like a shambolic moaning drunk

Exactly!

Posted by: JeffS

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 11:31

Quote:
Different strokes for different folks.

Oh, no doubt. And I'm really not arguing which band is better, only that I'm not really sure why Nirvana gets all the love when it seems to me there were several bands that contributed to the changing music scene.

Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 13:12

I think it was because Nirvana got wider radio play earlier and opened the doors for the grunge bands to get more airtime, bringing their sound to an awaiting angst-ridden suburbia.

Posted by: Robotic

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 13:35

Quote:
...bringing their sound to an awaiting angst-ridden suburbia.

When I was a kid we didn't have angst! Kids today are so lucky.
All we had was boredom and restlessness.

"Food? We didn't have food! We ate wool coats and we were happy!"
</Billy Crystal>

Posted by: tonyc

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 13:49

I'm a much bigger fan of Pearl Jam than I am of Nirvana, but I give Nirvana more credit for "changing" the music scene (not that they were trying.)

You are spot on that musically, Nirvana's song structures, lyrical content, etc. are nothing to write home about. And that's kinda the point. They took a minimalist approach to rock at a time when overproduced, formulaic hair metal was dominating the charts.

In my mind, the secret to their success was two things. The first is timing, because Nevermind came along at a time when rock really needed a new direction. More importantly, I think that the Nevermind albun was heavy enough to bring in the recovering metalheads, visceral enough to pick up some leftover punk rockers, yet still polished enough to have pop appeal.

I also give Butch Vig all the credit in the world for harnessing the raw power and anger of Kurt Cobain and turning it into a monster record that millions of people wanted to listen to over and over. I remember the first time I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit came on the radio as if it happened yesterday, and even though it wasn't my cup of tea at the time (I was heavy into classic rock back then) I could tell it was going to be big. I never thought it would spawn a totally new direction in rock, but that single really jumped out at you and forced you to listen, even if you didn't like it. This made Nirvana seem more revolutionary than Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc. even though that may not be the case when you listen to the other Seattle bands who *didn't* get picked up by the big labels.

Also, STP don't really belong in this discussion. They were really part of the second wave of grunge (Core was released late in 1992 and didn't get airplay until 1993) and IMHO a blatant ripoff of Pearl Jam. They did have some good tunes along the way, but they were definitely derivative of the first wave of grunge acts.

Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 14:21

Quote:
at a time when rock really needed a new direction....

I always wonder what kind of bands and music we'd have if Grunge hadn't hit when it did. Would the dirty power pop of bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain have had a chance to break into the mainstream?

--Nathan

Posted by: JeffS

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 14:24

Thanks Tony, that was a great post. I guess I just missed most of that dynamic at the time.

Quote:
Also, STP don't really belong in this discussion. They were really part of the second wave of grunge (Core was released late in 1992 and didn't get airplay until 1993) and IMHO a blatant ripoff of Pearl Jam.

My bad, I never got into STP, so I didn't really know their timeline.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 14:32

Quote:
When I was a kid we didn't have angst! Kids today are so lucky.
All we had was boredom and restlessness.

I am SO saving that up.

Posted by: JeffS

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 05/08/2005 16:31

Quote:
In fact, "Ten" is still probably in my list of Desert Island CDs, or at least the Bomb Shelter 20,

Pearl Jam CD: $16
Fire Sale Empeg W/ upgraded hard drive: $300
Being able to listen to a forgotten CD on the way to lunch without searching for a jewl case or shuffleing discs in the car: Priceless.

Man, I'd forgotten how much I liked that album.

Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 11:30

I drove over 12 hours this weekend and didn't have a single lockup with Alpha 11 on my MK2A with 32mb, making it the most stable alpha version for me yet.

Posted by: Daria

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 12:00

Quote:
I drove over 12 hours this weekend and didn't have a single lockup with Alpha 11 on my MK2A with 32mb, making it the most stable alpha version for me yet.

I put about 12 hours of road time in last weekend and another 7 this weekend with no lockups either. I'm not sure anything in my current playlist has locked up, though. Some stuff I have is more likely to lock up than others.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 12:14

Worked well enough on our road trip these past two weeks -- at least as well as any prior v3alpha release did. Several "sigkill" player restarts were noted, and I managed to get the wrong track "details" on the "INFO->TRACK" display by hitting the LEFT fp button quickly into the start of a new track (so that it went back to the previous track, but left the new track's info on the screen..).

Cheers

Posted by: Daria

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 12:15

Quote:
Worked well enough on our road trip these past two weeks -- at least as well as any prior v3alpha release did. Several "sigkill" player restarts were noted, and I managed to get the wrong track "details" on the "INFO->TRACK" display by hitting the LEFT fp button quickly into the start of a new track (so that it went back to the previous track, but left the new track's info on the screen..).

Cheers

Hm. You do remind me of 2 things:
1) got a sigkill when using "search" to manually tune a frequency
2) when tuning to AM, I see signal strength (620am has signal, 610 and 630 don't) but hear nothing. FM is fine.

Posted by: Roger

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 12:40

Quote:
It's a shame there isn't a hijack option to start the player with -i in case it happens again.

I nearly gave myself a heart-attack the other day: I upgraded to 3a11, and it wouldn't start, so (while at home), I ran it with -i.

Got in the car -- sounded a bit flat. I checked the EQ. Gah! It's totally flat. Where's the EQ I spent 3 hours setting up with John and John?!

Ah -- "player -i" doesn't blank the EQ -- it just resets back to EQ #1. My custom EQ is on #2.

Panic over.

(Although I think I'll write down the numbers somewhere, just in case)

Posted by: Roger

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 12:44

Quote:
Hm. You do remind me of 2 things:

The player doesn't always remember whether shuffle was on or off.

The way I most commonly use my player is to have shuffle turned on most of the time. When I come across a track from an album I like, I turn shuffle off, listen to a couple more tracks, and then turn it back on again.

However, the behaviour I saw this morning was that my running order was shuffled, but the player didn't think it was. So (thinking shuffle was on), I toggled it, which turned it on, rather than the expected off.

All of which meant that I lost track of the album I was trying to listen to more of...

Posted by: rob

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 16:14

I've had a problem with all v3-alphas with them forgetting settings across power cycles. Sometimes shuffle, sometimes repeat, sometimes the current running order. I've assumed this was a v3 glitch but I guess my player may have an individual problem with its powerfail interrupt.

Rob

Posted by: drakino

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 08/08/2005 16:37

Quote:
The player doesn't always remember whether shuffle was on or off.

This is actually a problem I see on 2.0 as well, with about 5,000 tracks in queue. I'm still not sure exactly when it happens, but I do make use of the bookmark feature to usually save the 5,000 song order to book mark 1 when listening to an audio book or something seperate from that mass.

Posted by: JeffreyB

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 10/08/2005 07:28

I've rebuilt my hds and am starting from scratch with my spare empeg running the new alpha 11. I've tried adding music 4 times now and after about 85-100 songs Emplode bombs with errors saying the connection was forcably closed by the remote host. On the front of the Empeg it has an error saying something about the hds timing out. I'm assuming Hijack is displaying the error. I got the same error while trying to delete the music that was on the Player. I'm running Emplode 2.0 as I read somewhere on here that v2.1 was too buggy. Is this a bug, or some setting that is incorrect? The hds check out fine and the stress test during the build was OK. I'm going to try going back to 2.0 release version and loading up the music with that.

JeffreyB

Posted by: JeffreyB

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 10/08/2005 08:49

OK,

This is not a bug in alpha 11. It does it on release 2.0 as well. I get alternating "hda: disk error: status timeout" and "hdb: disk error: status timeout" errors.

The log shows:

ide0: reset timed-out, status=0x80
hda: status timeout: status=0x80
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:04 (hda), sector 147686
hda: drive not ready for command
hdb: status timeout: status=0x80
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:44 (hdb), sector 147694
hdb: drive not ready for command
hda: status timeout: status=0x80
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset timed-out, status=0x80
hdb: status timeout: status=0x80
hdb: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset timed-out, status=0x80
hda: status timeout: status=0x80
hda: drive not ready for command

I'm assuming it's a HD or drive cable issue. Thing is, the player was working fine until I rebuilt the drives. I have a new extended HD cable and the IDE header was reflowed 2 years ago. Also the stress test during the rebuild was OK...

JeffreyB

Posted by: frog51

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 10/08/2005 10:02

For info: the only times I have seen this message have both been sorted by ensuring good IDE cable connection (by pressing it down hard again

One was not long after an upgrade, but the other appeared to be unconnected to anything, so my assumption is general day to day bumping wiggled the connector slightly loose.

Posted by: JeffreyB

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 10/08/2005 22:57

I reseated the IDE cable. All is fine now. I wonder why the stress test didn't show any problems...

Thanks!

JeffreyB

Posted by: jbradshw

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 19:54

Someone asked this earlier, but I didn't really see a response. How do I use Mark's ethernet upgrader from Windows?

Posted by: oliver

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 20:00

Check out this post, it's on page #2.

Posted by: jbradshw

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 20:02

Ahh ok.. I read that but when I started seeing chmod and bash, I figured that was a linux tool. I'll give it a try.

Posted by: oliver

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 20:09

they are linux tools, but the cygwin distro creates a linux shell inside of windows even with it's own command line interface window.

Posted by: jbradshw

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 20:33

OK.. well I got the distro and installed everything. I downloaded the upgrader from Mark's site, but I can't find an upgrader-cygwin.exe anywhere. The file on Mark's site is upgrader.tar and when I open that, all I see is 'upgrader'. What do i do at that point?

Posted by: Foz

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 21:29

Quote:
the cygwin distro creates a linux shell inside of windows

\begin{nitpick}

ok, it doesn't really create a linux shell. Cygwin is a bunch of unix tools ported to windows... many of which also happen to exist happily (and natively) under linux, solaris, HP/UX, AIX, BSD, etc.

\end{nitpick}

-- Gary F.

Posted by: oliver

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 21:55

Quote:
I downloaded the upgrader from Mark's site, but I can't find an upgrader-cygwin.exe anywhere.

Opps, left out one major step. You'll want to download this file from this thread.

Posted by: jbradshw

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 11/08/2005 22:45

Well I ran it once and it said BROKEN PIPE at the end - not sure if that means it was successful or not. I accidentally closed it, but i ran it again and here's the paste of the log:

Oh and I'm currently at a7 and the player is in standby when I ran this.

$ ./upgrader_0.8_cygwin.exe 192.168.1.28 car2-developer-v3.00-alpha11.upgrade

./upgrader_0.8_cygwin: Empeg/RioCar Ethernet Upgrade Tool, version 0.8, (c)2003
by Mark Lord
--> requires Hijack kernel on player
--> requires gunzip and ncftpput in $PATH

UPGRADE Requires upgrader version: 2
HWREV Supported hardware versions: 7,9
Placing player into Standy-By for the upgrade: ncftpput -E -c -Y "site button=t
op.L" "192.168.1.28" "/dev/null" </dev/null

INFO This release is suitable for Mark II empeg and Rio Car players (with r
otary control)
WHAT empegcar developer image
2005/07/25 18:54
RELEASE Rio Car player software - developer release v3.00-alpha11
VERSION Rio Car player software - developer release v3.00-alpha11
LOADER /proc/flash_0c000, size=452 bytes
--> pumping: ncftpput -E -c "192.168.1.28" "/proc/flash_0c000"
LOADER /proc/flash_0e000, size=1692 bytes
--> pumping: ncftpput -E -c "192.168.1.28" "/proc/flash_0e000"
KERNEL /proc/empeg_kernel, size=476784 bytes
--> SKIPPED
RAMDISK /proc/flash_b0000, size=327680 bytes
--> pumping: ncftpput -E -c "192.168.1.28" "/proc/flash_b0000"
Broken pipe

Posted by: mlord

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 12/08/2005 00:25

failed. dunno why.

Posted by: ithoughti

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 14/08/2005 15:52

I put 3.11 on the empeg today and the playlists were totally screwed up! Crazyness. There wasn't really any rhyme or reason to it either, it was like it was totally random and many songs/playlists weren't even there any more. I'm going back to 2.0 now to see if that fixes things.

Weird. Anyone else experience this issue?

Posted by: tfabris

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 14/08/2005 16:00

Yes, with earlier alphas. Haven't tried 11 yet.

Took me a couple of synchs to get there... First load of the alpha worked fine, it was only after a couple of synchs that my playlists got scrambled.

Posted by: peter

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 14/08/2005 16:18

Quote:
I put 3.11 on the empeg today and the playlists were totally screwed up! Crazyness. There wasn't really any rhyme or reason to it either, it was like it was totally random and many songs/playlists weren't even there any more. I'm going back to 2.0 now to see if that fixes things.

Weird. Anyone else experience this issue?

Have you previously had other v3 alphas on there? If so, you might need to manually delete your database files (or, at the very least, "database3"). It turns out that the stuff for seamless upgrading from v2 to v3, only works the first time and not if you go back and forth.

Peter

Posted by: ithoughti

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 14/08/2005 16:56

yes, I think I had v3 alpha3 on there long ago. I went back to 2.00 and all was back to normal. I'll try deleting the database files and see how that goes.

Actually, can I just synch in emplode and see if it fixes the problem? The playlists were all messed up in emplode too, so I was afraid that if I synched then they would be permanently messed up.

thanks!

Posted by: ithoughti

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 14/08/2005 17:52

I deleted the database files, put on alpha11 and all is well.

Thanks for your help Peter!

Posted by: ninti

Re: Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release - 22/08/2005 14:16

Quote:
People experiencing crashes and glitches with alpha11 should probably try increasing their ReserveCache

Well, either because of the above suggestion or just through statistical anomalies, Alpha 11 has been doing much better lately. Only had one crash in the last couple of weeks (a segfault, first time I ever saw that message), and very few cases of odd behaviour besides long pauses when I switch from radio back to player mode, so all-in-all it's behaving itself nicely.

Car-player v3.00, eleventh alpha release