Hi Everyone,

First and foremost I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Adrian, Computer Science PhD student from New Zealand. One of my friends has had an Empeg mk2 or mk2a for ages, always used to brag about having Linux on his head unit, I've always been fascinated, and I was able to get a Empeg mk1 from ebay for a song.

Anyways, it arrived today, already got some big plans for it (swapping out the 6gb drive for a 120gb is the first port of call), however i noticed that it's missing the handle. I'm assuming the previous owner broke it or something. I was wondering if anyone knows whether there's anywhere I could pick up a replacement handle. I've emailled empegrepair.com, but judging from the important notice on the front page it sounds like I might be out of luck there. At the moment I've just looped some wire around like a bucket handle, but I'd like something a little nicer in the long run.

Also if anyone has any recommendations for things to do with a empeg mk1, I'd love to hear them. I've had to order a null modem cable so I can do firmware updates, after that I wanna see exactly what I can do with this great wee player.

Cheers.

Hmm, a Mk. 1 handle, I doubt there's many of those out there. However, I think a suitable looking handle could probably be fashioned from bits without too much trouble. Far easier than a Mk2/a one anyway. I'm sure if you have a look at the various images on riocar.org you'd be able to see what it should look like.

How do you get to PhD level CompSci without owning at least one null modem cable??????

CompSci is lots of theory at least when I did it. Maybe he has the schematics for one

Yeah. You're not going to be able to find many spare Mk1 handles unless RobS has a stash somewhere.

Exactly...we hardly did anything with hardware for my bachelors, let alone any grad work.

Why work with hardware when you can work with a hardware emulator? Or write one

Most of the truly interesting and unusual stuff (above and beyond the fact that it's really great for playing music and organizing your music collection) requires ethernet, and only the Mk2 has ethernet.

And I know what your next question is going to be (can I plug in a USB-ethernet adapter), and that answer is no.

There was talk of making the MK1's USB port emulate one of those USB-ethernet adapters (kind of the reverse of plugging a USB-ethernet adapter into the player), but no one has yet tackled this one.

In the meantime, the MK1 is a fantastic music player.

There's a code dump of that project in the Hijack source tree (not compiled into the binaries by default, though). Apparently it is almost usable as-is, but not quite. Just needs a bit more TLC.

I don't remember whether it was for Mk1 or Mk2(a) players, though -- unless they have identical USB controllers (?).

If you have some software skills and fancy a bit of poking into the kernel driver, you could probably complete it in a day or two.

Cheers

That kind of a project would only be useful for Mk1 players, so I'd have to assume it was for a Mk1.

Definitely most useful for a Mk1, but also for Mk2(a) as well -- simpler than having to set up a network hub/switch and all.

Cheers

Cheers guys, this forum is more active than I realised :P

Yeah, I'm doing my PhD in Computer Vision, not too much use for null modem cables in that field of research. I don't have a huge amount of experience in hardware, other than a few papers on microprocessors I took during my undergraduate degree.

I plan on having a look through the Hijack source, I've had a bit of experience with Linux, though i've usually tried to avoid any kernel development wherever possible - my experience is in that area is more or less limited to the Minix OS.

I figured the handles were probably pretty hard to find, I was just wondering if anyone had done any 3rd party replacements or anything. The guy I bought it off says that it did have a handle, so perhaps he just didn't include it, he said he'd have a look around.