Major apologies if this has been asked a thousand times but I have searched for a good half hour and found nothing.

Is there a way to fill up my Empeg hard drive with nice new MP3s (from scratch) without using the emplode etc , by simply connecting the hard drive directly to my computer , then putting it back in the Empeg? Presumbably the Empeg wouldn't know what to do with it and would get all confused , but is there some software app to sort out the HD so the empeg knows whats on it?

Thanks in advance.
Will (Sussex, UK) MK11 30GB bog standard

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see why you couldn't mount the drive on a linux box (or even possibly under Cygwin?) and use mp3tofid and rsync to copy your tunes over. I've never used mp3tofid or rsync for anything empeg related, so you'll have to do a quick search on them.

BTW, not to hijack the question, can someone tell me if you could mount the filesystem on a big-endian system, like a PowerPC Mac? Just to trying to satisfy my curiosity.

WillD, yes you can do it, but it's more trouble than it's worth.

The empeg doesn't store its files as loose MP3s. Instead, it stores them in a special database format. This format is described here.

In order to do what you describe, you would need the following things:

- You would need to dismantle your player each time you wanted to load tunes on it, which is a rather big job.

- You would need to disconnect the drive cable, risking wear and tear on the most failure-prone parts of the player.

- Every time you open the player, you take the chance of damaging certain fragile components that are easy to break accidentally.

- You would need to buy a special adapter cable to connect the empeg's laptop-sized hard disk to your desktop PC.

- Your desktop PC would need to be running Linux so it could mount the Linux filesystems on the drive.

- You would need to use the MP3toFID utility (as described above) to convert your MP3s into the format that the empeg expects.

After all that is said and done, it's simply easier and faster to use Emplode or Jemplode, and use the player as it was intended to be used.

What is your objection to using Emplode, may I ask? Perhaps whatever problem you're running into is something that we have a solution to.

Hi, yes it is the time issue and also I was thinking of putting in a more reliable drive. My machine (30GB) comes up with HDD not found, apart from in warm weather. In cold weather i have to power it up 2 or 3 times, leaving it on inbetween, to get some heat into the drive.

I just didn't fancy tying up the PC for proably 24 hours uploading a whole drives worth of mp3 with USB1 , and I kinda figured one of you clever lot would have come up with a facility to fill up the drive . (you seem to have invented some other amazing gear!)

Since I would have the machine apart anyway, there would be no extra trauma for it with regards to the connectors. Also, I planned to use a USB to 2.5 inch drive converter to actually attach it to the PC for filling.

How long should 40 gigs take to fill up with the USB lead?

Thanks!.. and Yikes. Might be a bit beyond my capabilities / patience

Willd, definitely do ethernet instead of USB, and just stick to the standard music upload methods.

Digression: BBS! Wow! I just remembered - I have a Wildcat BBS software install CD. It would be fun to install it on a Win95 computer just for the fun of it. No?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat!_BBS
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