Hello,

just wanted to ask if there is support for DHCP and Samba on the Rio Karma. This would be very cool, you could just plug this baby into your home network or the network of a friend (imagine a party) and the Karma grabs an IP Address and starts serving MP3s/Oggs via a plain Window File share.
That way you could use the Karma as your sole MP3 storage and play them MP3s via network.

I don't want no stupid software organising my MP3s for me, I want access to the file system layer and use my own tools to organize the MP3s. Infact, on a plain Windows share, _every_ MP3 organizing tool would work (read: platform independant).

So, how far does the ethernet support of this player go?

PS: When is it available in Europe/Germany?

DHCP: yes. Static IP also possible.

SAMBA: no.

-ml

Well, with the samba. There is something in the powertoys for XP that allows you to add view audio devices from the "My Computer" browser. This might do what you want, but the powertoy is a bit buggy - I am not certain it will do what you want it to.

Paul, didn't they drop the powertoy support? Precisely because the powertoy was so buggy?

As far as Samba goes, remember that Windows shares are a proprietary technology. I'd be much happier seeing it work as an FTP server like Mark's Hijack allows.

Once upon a time I thought it would be cool to have Samba on the empeg, but then Hijack came out with a lightweight, stable, reliable FTP service. Now I'm much happier having that in place than a buggy memory-hog implementation of a proprietary Microsoft protocol.

I don't want no stupid software organising my MP3s for me, I want access to the file system layer and use my own tools to organize the MP3s.

There's something you have to understand about the way things like the Karma and the Empeg work...

They are FAST.

In other words, they can instantly call up the track information, instantly display a menu of artists or playlists, instantly seek to any track in the collection... in fact, just about anything you can think of doing, these players can do it fast and can do it without interrupting the playback. In many cases, they can do it without even spinning up the hard disk.

Wanna know how they can do it?

It's because they use their own management software and their own database. If they had designed them in such a way that they worked from the loose raw MP3 information in a loose file system, then each of those operations would require scanning through the folders on the hard disk and re-reading the tag data. And that would be SLOW.

If they didn't use their own management software, they would not boot up so quickly, they would not index and search so fast, and you would be complaining about the poor performance.

And by the way, I think a lot of people who read this board (not just the Cambridge folk, either), might consider it a bit of an insult to call Emplode, Jemplode, RMM, and RMM lite "stupid software".

I don't know if it was really dropped. I think it was more that it was not really supported. Powertoys was the buggy bit - it just searched out audio devices and dumped them into the My Computer. As of the last firmware, I think it is still in. I do not have this installed, but there were a few questions on the beta board that were explained (or at least suspected to be) by powertoys trying to open the device.

I don't doubt that there Software kicks ass. And I don't doubt that it runs perfectly under Windows or perhaps Linux. But I'm not running one of those OSes, so what should I do? I can't use their software so it's useless.

FTP in itself is platform independant, but you can't "mount" a FTP Server, that means when you want to listen to MP3 stored on the Karma via your PC, you first have to download the complete MP3, before starting to listen.

Samba (more precisely SMB) _is_ a propriatary protocol, but there is also NFS. All my MP3s are stored at a NFS server right now, it would be cool if the Karma could take over that role.

As for the "stupid software", that might have been a bit harsh. In fact, I've never used one of these tools. It's just that I'm pretty sure, that sooner or later I want one feature that is not present and I want to be _able_ to write my own tools managing the MP3s. If Rio would lay open the protocol used to talk to the Karma over TCP/IP that would be no problem, but I'm pretty sure they won't release such information (Please tell me I'm wrong).

No matter what, I _will_ get a Karma as soon as it is available in stores in Germany. I just want to let people know that either SMB or NFS is desired (at least by me), so perhaps it can be added in a later Firmware revision.

Jemplode and RMM Lite are both Java applications so if you can get a JVM for your OS then it'll be fine.
Adding your own software to the Karma will be harder than doing it for an empeg car player. The Karma doesn't run Linux but eCos so the Karma runs a huge binary which contains everything including eCos.

I can't use their software so it's useless.

Yeah, that was why they had Mike write the Java version of RMM, which is included on the player and can be retrieved via ethernet without any software installation at all.

Just so you know, RMM really rocks, and it works on any java-capable OS.

Ok, thanks for the clarification!

Now to the availability of the Karma 40GB in Germany....

If Rio would lay open the protocol used to talk to the Karma over TCP/IP that would be no problem, but I'm pretty sure they won't release such information (Please tell me I'm wrong)

If they're using a similar protocol as in the empeg, then that information is already dispersed in various posts on this BBS. Mike wrote JEmplode for the empeg as a non-official third party application, and was later hired to create RMM Lite based on the strength of that.

If they're using a similar protocol as in the empeg

They're not.

Hmm. Ok.

Revise my previous statement to read, "Sorry, you;ll have to reverse engineer it yourself."

but you can't "mount" a FTP Server

Not necessarily true. You can mount an ftp directory as a file system on at least some operating systems (I've done it on Mac OS X and linux for example). You end up with something functionally equivalant to an NFS mount.

-Mike

Certain Windows shell/explorer extentions will let you do this as well. Powerdesk comes to mind (no link handy).

-Zeke

These ftp mounts are crude hacks and not something I would call a feature. Real NFS/SMB/AFS/CODA/whatever would be cool. But I understand that this is not a feature you can sell to the average Joe.
Therefore I'm perfectly happy that one can use a Java based software and that you can download it from the Player itself.

Which brings me to a new idea: http support? MP3-streaming a la Shoutcast? (Too bad you can't forward/rewind/skip/serach playlist via Shoutcast

Making the empeg be an AFS server has been on my list a while, but I haven't come up with a good way to rectify the memory needs of the player and of the afs server. I may see if I can streamline things a bit to make something special-for-empeg.

(Of course this doesn't help the Karma but you reminded me of it...)