Let's try here before pronouncing this a bug:

I have at the moment only a Linux (RH 5.2) laptop with serial port at disposal (no hub, been cretin and forgot to buy Ethernet crossed cable ('null-hub', so to say)). I will try tomorrow with Windoze and Ether, but I would like to start playing tonight :)

Anyway, using microcom (a serial terminal emulator) I can see nicely empeg boot messages, it even reacts (q will restart player). However, emptool (static one, other is missing some libs) does not see the player. I tried

emptool.static /dev/ttyS0

and

emptool.static --serial /dev/ttyS0

to no avail. It complains

4002 Unit not found, check cabling and setup

Any ideas?


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

I don't know if this is the same thing that happend to me. But when I first got my Mk2 I tried running empload on two different windows machines over the serial port. As soon as I got home I use USB and it worked fine. Then the next day I tried serial again on the same computers and it worked. So to me it seem like there was some inital state that would not allow regular serial to work, but after a sync with USB then it worked. It was back in the days of beta11d and I reported it to empeg but didn't know what it could have been.

-Finally received my Mark2 no thanks to customs.

Hm, I am sure I already replied to this.... Must have disconnected from the preview

Anyway, isn't serial supposed to be 'last resort' to fall back to when nothing else works. Well, I will find out later today and tomorrow, when i try with various combinations of OS and transports...

Thanks!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

On my own EMPEG, connecting from my Linux desktop machine (a homebrew machine), I never got the serial port quite working. Then I dragged home a laptop running Windows (a Sony Vaio) and everything worked like a champ. The Linux box is presently uploading about 10GB of music to the player via Ethernet, averaging about 380 KB/sec. Divide that out, and it should be ready to go tomorrow morning.

Moral of the story: serial ports suck, and they may well suck more on Linux than on Windows. But, you only need the serial port long enough to configure the machine and then you can do everything else via Ethernet.

P.S. Thanks Mike Crowe for helping me diagnose my problems. [email protected] is a wonderful thing.

Hmmm ... I tried out the serial connection (hadn't do so lately), and saw the same thing you describe. Removed the lock file, rebooted the empeg, and here is what happened:

./emptool --serial /dev/ttyS0
2000 Checking connection [Done]
2121 Downloading
2121 Starting download [Done]
2122 Retrieving tags index [Done]
2123 Retrieving databases [Done]
2124 Retrieving playlists [Done]
/> ls
expand: added /Unattached Items
expand: added /Albums
expand: added /Singles
expand: added /Mixes
expand: added /Humour
expand: added /Setup
2402 Listing total: 6
/Unattached Items
/Albums
/Singles
/Mixes
/Humour
/Setup

Since it didn't work initially, I'm wondering if there isn't something 'wonky' on the empeg side ... hmmm ... I just quit out of emptool, and attempted to restart it, now it just sits there staring at me. Seems like something is going on, just not quite what one would expect.

Hmmm, so the procedure was to reboot empeg after first unsuccesfull attempt (and removal of lock file - it gets left behind here, too). I'll try it.

BTW, serial works OK from a WinNT machine. However, since terminal works OK on both (microcom and hyperterm), I would suspect a problem with emptool, not the port itself.

Anyway, we'll see tomorrow...

Thanks!



Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

But, you only need the serial port long enough to configure the machine and then you can do everything else via Ethernet.

Hm, yes, as long as it works long enough for configuration and that Ether works itself. I have another problem with it, but I am moving it to Bugs Report section...

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

A bit of update concerning my inability to connect to my empeg (dev 1.0) using emptool and serial on RH 5.2:

emptool --serial --debug 2 /dev/ttyS0 says something like 'no data timeout in state 0'. xosview shows activity on the port all the time. It seems that some exchange does happen: when I connect to empeg using terminal emulator after failed emptool connection attempt, the player does not respond to serial line commands (q, for exemple), but just beeps, untill killed by ctrl-c (otherwise it behaves normally).

Any ideas?

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green