Rio Car Alpha Release 13-Feb-2004
Version 3.00-alpha7

Copyright (c) Digital Networks North America, Inc. 2003, 2004


* Notes

This is a Rio Car Alpha Release. This release may not be stable, and is
for empeg Mark 2 and Rio Car hardware only. Mark 1 support is problematic
and will be addressed for a future release.

Those who value stability over excitement should steer well clear of
this version, in favour of the v2.00 release.


* General

If you are not an alpha tester, please hold back on reporting bugs until
a public Beta is released - unless it is something really critical!

As always, the Unofficial Empeg BBS at http://empeg.comms.net is a good
place for discussing this alpha.


* Installation

You should install the new emplode 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.

This release contains an interim emplode build, which does not yet have an
installer.  Install the v2.00-rc2 version of emplode, unzip the new
executable and library to another folder, and execute from there.

Now proceed with installation of the firmware.

Connect your computer to your empeg car using the supplied serial cable.
Switch off your player at the wall or unplug the IEC cable from the brick
power supply.

The upgrade can be installed by serial only. Run the Upgrade Wizard and
either enter or browse for the upgrade file. Click Next and select the
serial port that your unit is connected to. Click Next again.

When instructed to do so by the upgrade program re-apply power to your
player by switching it on at the wall or connecting the IEC cable and brick
power supply. If you have an all-in-one power supply then switch it on at
the wall ifc possible or plug into the wall. The upgrade should then be
applied. If it fails, try again.


* What's New Since 3.00-alpha5 - Player

Alpha 6, in case you're wondering, wasn't intended to be public -- but it
sort of leaked, so this one had to be 7.

A serious bug in earlier alphas whereby the disks were never spun down is
fixed.

Database rebuilding now works.

The bug in earlier alphas whereby Transient Info mode worked more like Absent
Info mode is fixed.

The scrolling text in Transient Info and Line Info modes now remains
visible no matter how much space the timecode takes up.

A new config.ini setting, "squash_visuals" in the "[display]" section,
controls whether Transient Info and Line Info squash the visuals. The
default is "1" (yes, as per previous alphas); use "0" for the behaviour
of v2.00. Sadly, there is no UI for changing this setting at the moment.

Ogg Vorbis files now play back gaplessly again.

Ogg Vorbis files containing two (concatenated) streams no longer crash the
player. (They're still officially "not supported", though.)

Some more memory has been eked out for the cache, which is larger than in
earlier alphas, though still not as large as in v2.00.

Insert/Enqueue/Append into an empty running-order no longer causes either
crashing or weirdness.

Some unused files that shouldn't have been in the root partition have
been removed (i.e. the upgrade files should be a bit smaller).

Many further fixes inherited from Rio Karma, too numerous to identify.


* What's New Since 2.00-alpha1 - Emplode

No changes.


* What's New Since 2.00-alpha1 - EmpTool

No changes.


* Known Issues

Probably doesn't work on Mark 1 players (untested).

Memory footprint is a little large resulting in reduced caching -
especially on empeg (Mark 2) players. If you have at any time manually
altered the ReserveCache setting in config.ini and your player is
failing to rebuild its databases on startup, try reducing ReserveCache,
or indeed setting it to 0. This may necessitate temporarily disabling some or
all third-party software on your player.

Reportedly, using the search features can cause audio glitching. This
has yet to be addressed.

For various reasons, the player now opens the serial port in "raw"
(character-orientated) rather than "cooked" (line-orientated) mode; this
may or may not be a problem in practice, but is a change from earlier
versions.


Peter Hartley 2004-Feb-13
pdhartley@rioaudio.com