I'm new to this stuff, can someone tell me what the difference is between consumer image and developer image? Do I need this for upgrading...i'm confused now....help!

The developer images include support for getting to the Linux OS the empeg runs. If you have no need for this, stick with the consumer images. Also, I'd advise you upgrade to version 1.03 if you just got your player and it's running 1.02.

For help on upgrading, refer to the FAQ entry on it here.

Hope you enjoy your new toy.

Thanks...Wouldn't the player come with the newest version out there? Should I go ahead and skip to v.2.0 or stay with v.1.03 like you said? What are some of the major differences between 1.03 and 2.0 anyway?

The players were all built back in January of 2001 or before, so they did not come with the newest software preloaded. 1.03 is pretty rock solid, it might be best to work with it for at least a few days before moving to 2.0. The 2.0 Beta 7 is exactly that, beta quality software. It introduces a flood of new features, but at the price of possibly having your player not work as advertised. You can try it, then go back to 1.03 if you run into any major problems.

What are some of the major differences between 1.03 and 2.0 anyway?

2.0b7 has a lot of new visuals. It has more shuffle options. It has insert capability. The UI for the equalizer is vastly improved. Lots of additional capabilities. But you pay for it with a lack of stability (compared to 1.03) but none of the bugs (so far) are "show stoppers" -- more along the line of petty annoyances that might cause you to have to reboot the player once in a while.

Well... one show stopper in emplode: if you try to move songs from one playlist to another, they'll disappear. But there are workarounds for that as long as you're aware of the problem, and the next release of the beta software will certainly fix it.

The consensus is: upgrade to 1.03 to set up your player and install your music and fix your tags and build your playlists. Then when you are comfortable that things are the way you like them, go to 2.0b7 to play.

tanstaafl.

Wouldn't the player come with the newest version out there?

It does. It comes with the newest finalized stable non-beta version, which is 1.03.

At the moment, 2.0 is still in beta and is not necessarily stable. I would recommend that you use 1.03 for a while until you've got all your music loaded and fully organized. When you feel you're ready to walk on the Wild Side, you're welcome to give one of the 2.0 betas a shot.

It does. It comes with the newest finalized stable non-beta version, which is 1.03.

Actually they seem to be coming with 1.02 (guess that was current when they where produced). So everyone who gets a new unit should upgrade to at least 1.03.

-Mike

Hmm, okay, I must be thinking of the tuner modules which I think ship with 1.03.

The unit I received a couple of weeks ago had 1.02 installed, with the 1.03 disk packaged with the tuner module. Then again I seem to have IBM hard-drive in my unit, when I thought they used Fujitsu drives.

This is entirely correct. The units come preinstalled with v1.02. However, it didn't support the tuner module correctly, so v1.03 (which does) is packaged with the module.

ISTR that the only changes in v1.03 were for the tuner, so v1.02 is fine. However, if you do phone support with a problem with v1.02, they'll tell you to try it with v1.03, so you may as well upgrade anyway.

v2.0, on the other hand, is in beta, so it's probably still fairly flakey in some areas.

As for the hard-disks, we use IBM and Fujitsu disks.

If my new player arrives I will check the player version and upgrade to 1.03 before I load any songs. I'll wait awhile before I load v2.0. The volume adjust kernel (?) is in v2.0 or can I use it in 1.03? I was hoping to use that trick from the start. No idea how to load it anyway. So much stuff to learn about a MP3 player!!!!!

VolAdj is/was available for 1.03 too, but it's a more involved job if you want to be able to switch it on/off or alter parameters, instead of just using the default value.
HiJack does a great job of encapsulating this.

Otherwise it's just a kernel image upload, trivial to do with Tony's Logo Editor.
The modified kernel is available here (the release 1.03 kernel for Mk1 and Mk2 players link)

/Michael

Then again I seem to have IBM hard-drive in my unit, when I thought they used Fujitsu drives.

I just had the hood off of my new Mk2a Rio car & it has a Fujitsu hard drive 10Gig maybe it depends on HDD capacity.

I've seen some posts of the Hijack Kernel but I'm not sure what it actually does. Can someone post what the Hijack features are? I so confused about all these patches.

Hijack is a hacked version of the kernel written by Mark Lord. Details of what it does are at his page, here.

Note that his page sub-links to a separate page which is the list of features.

...and the version changes very often and quickly, it has jumped about 3 versions since yesterday!!! My URLy Warning software alarm goes off a lot on his page his page changes so often.