It really does seem tied to USB access.

Rob, you're wrong: Serial also falls over! Only not as quickly as USB, but it is instable too!
As said earlier, I had about a Gig of MP3s waiting for more space on empeg. After adding the new disk, I set up emplode to push an initial 500MB into Emma. Well, USB fell over quickly; after some 75MB. Serial looked much more stable: after 11 hours of pumping MP3s it was still alive. I left it alone with an estimated 2 hours to go, expecting it to finish without any trouble. WRONG

Upon return home, the serial link too had failed, taking W98 along with it. The emplode window was still there. Also emplode's error window, but the crash had taken all contents with it. Only cycling power brought back W98 and Emma too was so confused she needed a boot. Thus, I cannot report any error messages. It may well be the same error reported elsewhere on this board (can't find it right now) on a total Windows and Emma crash. As usual all MP3s ended up in 'unattached': synching fell over only 3 MP3's short of 533MB.

I agree, 500MB of MP3s is pushing it. But from the experience I believe that the bug is not confined to USB. I bet it is related to PC resources. With USB running at 8.5 times the speed of serial, it is just more susceptible to the problems.

I hope the empeg team hasn't given up on this problem now that W2000 seems more forgiving. I'd hate to upgrade to W2000 (My 2-yr old BIOS needs an update, but Dell don't want to do it -- how's that for support ). Besides, the empeg folks' marketing plans for Mark-2 may be seriously affected if emplode only works with W2000.

note for Mike:
Can you please send me the new USB drivers? See my e-mails on this to suppor and yourself

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)