Sorry for the lack of communication, I was on a plane for most of Monday.

The 2.00 Beta player seems to be OK, but unfortunately emplode seems to have problems at the moment. The installer doesn't work correctly (screws up USB drivers) and at least two alpha testers have reported that this build barely works at all. It works OK for us, we need to work out what the problem is before releasing.

We'll be looking into it to today to decide exactly what the impact will be on the release. Note that we're not working on GMT this week, so bare with us.

Alpha team home addresses coming soon *grin*

Rob

I coulda called this one... ;)

As a developer, that's what I hate about Q/A teams... they always seem to make me work more! :)

(O|||||O)

Yeah, QA teams are nearly as bad as customers, if it weren't for QA and customers us developers would have much easier lives...

__
Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Phew, now I can stop worrying....

Question: DO we NEED emplode to get the new player uploaded to the empeg????? Of course, I could be terribly wrong, but i guess NO! Pleeeeezzzzz give us the .upgrade file and the upgrade tool right now, emplode can wait (at least for me)...

­­______________
Edwin de Vaan

I guess it's the 'barely works at all' aspect that would prevent even a partial release taking place.

The implication in that statement is that the new version of Emplode doesn't really function at all in the current build (at least for some people). This could be due to problems with Emplode or problems on the player side (unlikely, I reckon, but possible).

In order to avoid future problems with mismatches between Emplode and the player, I reckon it's better to wait.

Alternatively, if it definitely isn't a problem on the player side, then I say 'release away' :)

Bagpuss.

In order to avoid future problems with mismatches between Emplode and the player, I reckon it's better to wait.

True, but in case you didn't know, Emplode will have its own versioning in the future, totally having no relation with the versioning of player.
What I actually meant was to install the newest player on the empeg to play with but don't use emplode (any version) yet, until proven (hopefully today) the newest version is stable enough to release. Furthermore, in this way the load on the empeg webserver is spread out over a larger timeframe. First everybody starts downloading the .upgrade files, since they aren't expected to be altered anyway. Then when emplode is ready, get that chunk. So Rob, what are you waiting for! Plz hand it over to us!

­­______________
Edwin de Vaan

There's no problems with emptool, then? Do we have to wait for the Windows users...?

While we're on the issue, is it safe to drive a 2.0 player with the current JEmplode (without access to any new functionality), or must we wait for an update to that?

--
Toby Speight - 040103385

Well, think of the inevitable scenario.

X Million downloads of the player. Everyone plays with it for a little while and then - they start getting impatient. So, they use the last version of emplode to try downloading tracks to test out the new WAV and WRM playback, and other things. Ooops. Protocol mismatches. Player expects different emplode behaviour. Errors start popping up, people beseige the board with questions that have resulted from the problems caused by the mismatches. Extra (unneccessary) work for the team and support, which stops them getting on with their normal scheduled work, ie. fixing emplode bugs.

Even worse, someone trashes a partition and looses an entire collection, which they have (inevitably) not backed up, or were about to. Angst, fear, loathing. 2.0 B1 gets a bad rap and rep, just because it was released prematurely.

I'm sure the guys will release it when they are confident there is nothing nasty waiting....

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

More then half the reason I want the new release is emplode. I'll finally have a way of cleaning up the mess that is my music (and Josh's) that we loaded before the US meet.

From Rob's previous post:
* Installation
Download either the consumer or developer images and emplode (or emptool) from the empeg-car upgrades site.

You should install the new emplode or emptool before installing this
release. If you fail to do so your empeg-car unit may not function and it
will be necessary to apply the upgrade again using the correct version of
empegUpgrade or upgclient.

So I'd say it needs the new emplode/emptool to be certain it works correctly.

Dave Clark
Austin, Texas
12g Blue MK2
S/N was 80000329 -> now 90000970

Exactly... Anyone who's willing to risk corrupting their database, FID files, etc. to get a release a couple days sooner needs to do some thinking about how much of a pain in the arse it would be to have to re-sync their entire music collection.

While I'm naturally disappointed by the tentative beta release date not being met, I would not want to load a product with severe deficiencies known to the development team. Empeg is protecting us from the common Microsoft practice of releasing KNOWN crappy builds to satisfy a deadline but not a quality objective.

In the future I think the Empeg team should not even divulge release dates at all, and surprise us with new releases. I know that isn't a popular notion, but I'd rather not have my hopes up. I have worked in software testing and now in development, which has shown me how often companies like to set artificial release dates which don't take into account the process of fixing bugs encountered in a thorough test. While I'm sure the Empeg team testing the 2.0 baseline well, the alpha team obviously found a showstopper. THAT'S WHAT ALPHAS ARE FOR. We should *expect* alpha releases to be shitcanned because the Empeg dev team doesn't have every imaginable confguration available to test on. I am glad there are guys who get these bugs worked out before they end up on my Empeg. While I would LOVE new features, I realize it's too much work for the Empeg folks to push out shoddy releases just to satisfy our collective GeekLust.

All of that said, I hope the USB problem gets licked and the beta magically appears on the support site soon. :)

-Tony
MkII #554

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I have never installed any new software on my player, having gotten one of the first batch of Mk2's with consumer 1.0 on it.

Will upgrading from 1.0 directly to 2.0 be okay? Or should I get 1.03 first? I never bothered since I wasn't getting a tuner right away.

Anyway, I can't wait to see all these great changes and additions! Great job guys!

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

Why are people on this BBS so damn patient? To tell you the truth, I am really sick of waiting. This kind of stuff doesn't make anyone at sonicblue look good.

Why are people on this BBS so damn patient? To tell you the truth, I am really sick of waiting. This kind of stuff doesn't make anyone at sonicblue look good.


While I tried that patience thing, and gave it up because it took too long......


I'd rather them get it RIGHT than release something that is LESS than the existing code.

All the features in the world don't make a damn bit of difference if a DB issue eats your drive, and a previously unknown bug in Emplode prevents a reload.

When it's ready, it will be here.

In the mean time, the rest of us are just hitting refresh a hell of a lot.



edit

And yeah, I know, you COULD reimage to 1.03 to recover, but the point still stands...

End Edit

Edited by synergy on 09/10/01 08:27 PM.

I am really sick of waiting

Ok, so if you had gotten 2.0 BETA yesterday, and it broke your USB support, how would you feel. Or if you had it a few months back, and all of a sudden your music partition was gone... I'm afraid of how many people here would download beta software, then turn around and curse the company for any problems. It's probably why empeg went to a hand picked alpha team for 2.0 instead of releasing build after build to us here.

Had empeg long ago just said that 1.03 is it, many people here would be happy. Then, even if 2.0 came out with no notice, people would have been plesently suprised. I'm really hoping 2.0 comes out soon, but I don't fault empeg for the delays. They were nice enough to give us sneak peaks at what is in the pipeline, and I appreciated that. While I have been impatient with the release somewhat due to all the hype and anticipation built up here, it has never turned to a negative thought.

I'm afraid of how many people here would download beta software, then turn around and curse the company for any problems.

I don't think anyone here would do that. Everyone here knows the definition of "beta", so I don't think there would be a problem with complaints.

Really, the guys are holding back the software because they're being nice and they don't want to frustrate everyone. If there's a show-stopper, they don't think it's right to drop it on the public in that state.

They're certainly not holding it until it's perfect-- the point of beta is so people can find the few remaining bugs. They just want the biggest bugs out of the software so that it's at least useful to everyone. They thought they'd nailed the last of those big bugs last week, but a couple more cropped up on the weekend. I admit, one of those bugs was discovered by me: I found a problem with the USB driver installation on Friday night.

___________
Tony Fabris

Err, whan was the last time you got any software upgrade for an electronic appliance (or, for that matter, an appliance whose SW can be upgraded)?

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

whan was the last time you got any software upgrade for an electronic appliance (or, for that matter, an appliance whose SW can be upgraded)?

Tivo 2.5, that enabled dual tuners, less than a month ago!! Does that count?

Dave Clark
Austin, Texas
12g Blue MK2
S/N was 80000329 -> now 90000970

Ahem, it does...

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

Eeerrrr... 'cos someone else is doing the work for us? For free? Doh....

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

... and now we play the waiting game..........
















Screw the waiting game! Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos.

/simpsons

Why are we so patient? Practice.
It's been 2 years since I got my Mk1. and there have been updates over that time, one of them hardware.
As stated above, I don't want to have to suffer some of the things the alphas had to. It's not going to make much difference waiting one or two weeks for this next release.

Murray
Go-Wit-Da-Fro

Hm... The install of the Rio PNP600 (or whatever it was called)
screwed up my USB drivers. The Rio drivers wouldn't unload
and still only about half the USB devices I connect work. There is also an unkillable process on my Win2000-taskmanager.

I think I'll wait for the proper emplode-drivers.

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)

although... who needs USB anyway...

TeeMcBee
Mk2, # 080000143, 12+30 GB, Tuner Module

it should be ok to upgrade directly to 2.0 i think.

TeeMcBee
Mk2, # 080000143, 12+30 GB, Tuner Module

Eeerrrr... 'cos someone else is doing the work for us? For free? Doh....

hmmm...what was it that I paid my $1200 for? Oh that's right an empeg with VR, a tuner (don't have it yet, but apparently it is on the way), etc...

can you imagine how fantastically cool the software for the empeg could be or could have been if the kind folks at empeg would have released the source like they originally intended to? I'm talking about back in the day before the mk.I when all was a dream.

I'm a patient guy and I don't want a software release that doesn't work, I understand that they are holding it until it works, that's fine. I just want to see the full potential of the empeg, and the only way to really do that is for them to release the source, so we all can write stuff for it and build on each other's work. We would have software upgrades every other day if all the people on this BBS who knew what they were doing, were working together to improve the empeg.

my $.02

//m

it should be ok to upgrade directly to 2.0 i think.

Yes, it is OK to do that. However, Emplode installs to a different folder and it might confuse some people to have two emplodes on their Start menu. The 1.03 emplode will not talk to the 2.0 player, and vice-versa.

___________
Tony Fabris

Where did you get the idea that we ever intended to open the source?? That was and is our product! The value of the player source (which represents many man-years of development, and is the basis of several products other than Rio Car) is extremely high. We pay nine people to work full time on that player* and the fact is we're not going to give it away for free.

Rob

* OK so they also spend quite a lot of time reading the Register

Don't get me wrong Rob, I love the empeg, and I got my money's worth there is no doubt in that. I just think that there is so much potential for the empeg that will never be realized, and it's a bit disapointing.

//m

I thought he was referring to the time before empeg was even started.

Fly me to the moon...

I thought he was referring to the time before empeg was even started.

Yeah that is clear, but I will second Rob's notion that nobody on the Empeg team ever even hinted that the Empeg's player software source code would be available to the general public. I've been on this BBS since mid-1999 and in the pre-Empeg days, I followed Hugo's mp3mobile page rather closely. Throughout this time, there has been no indication or even hint that the player software would be open sourced... So I think the aforementioned notion that somehow the original "spirt" of the Empeg was to have completely open-sourced development is revisionist history. On the other hand, kernel mods, hardware projects, etc. were all encouraged and unofficially supported right here. But releasing the player source was never a part of their strategy. If someone finds evidence to the contrary I'd love to see it, though.

-Tony
MkII #554