I just added a genuine Rio to my stable of Dell DARs and have noticed a few differences that I'd appreciate comments on.

The genuine Rio seems more stable than the Dell, in that some of the "flakyness" (i.e. hangups) i experience when one Dell is listening to another doesn't happen when the Rio is the listener!

Also the scrolling artist and album text while a tune is playing is nice and clear on the Rio, but blurry and hard to read on the Dell.

Any thoughts?

So you get hangups when one Dell listens to another Dell? Are they genuine Dells or Rebadged? I've got one genuine dell and five rebadged Dells and four Genuine receivers so I'll try and test your problems on my setup. I have never noticed any hangups or flakiness at all while in listen mode using alpha 5.

Edit: Maybe I'm not having the flakiness because I'm using jrec while you're using ARM? Have you tried jrec? (yeah I know it's a *little* difficult to set up but it sure is stable).

Also the scrolling artist and album text while a tune is playing is nice and clear on the Rio, but blurry and hard to read on the Dell.


hmmm... haven't noticed the bluriness either.

Jerz, the Dells are indeed the rebadged versions. I haven't tried Jreceiver as ARM 1.04 & tRio seem to be doing what I need.
I should try out JReceiver some time.
It still doesn't expain why the genuine Rio works better than my re-badged Dells.

I have to agree with Jerz, I have one Dell, one rebranded Dell, one straight Rio, and one silver Rio (Don't know if this is different from the straight Rio) however they all work great on my Linux, Trio, jrec setup. I did notice some hang up problems when I was running Trio and ARM on a windows box, but I always attributed it to the amount of use my windows box was under, and hanging in memory or something. I know that I would run out of virutal memory more when I had all four of my rios running off the same ARM server, for extended amounts of time.

Jerz, if I added right that makes ten rio's you have hooked up is that to one server and have you had any problems with that high of numbers? I have a few rooms left that don't have Rio's yet, I want to add them but have been worried about over powering servers etc.

Thanks,
Keith

Which Linux distro are you running?

I also agree with Jerz and the others. I have 4 Rios working with tRio (alpha 5), ARM and a W2K server all connected through ethernet. I had all four working hard over the Xmas break (synchronised all day on Xmas day playing Grannies special playlist!) without any hanging or skipping.

M

...if I added right that makes ten rio's you have hooked up is that to one server and have you had any problems with that high of numbers?
Yes that is all ten to one server and no, I haven't noticed any problems due to the quantity of receivers connected. However, it is a dedicated PII400 running win2k server that's only purpose is to provide dhcp and run jrec, ARM and trio.

....aaaah go ahead try adding a few more.

Jerz, why do you need to run ARM if you are running JRec?

I am running SUSE 9.0 Pro, it was very easy to install both the OS and trio, jrec etc I have a D-Link router plugged into an 18 port 10t hub that I picked up from a used computer parts store.

Jerz, why do you need to run ARM if you are running JRec?
Because even though I'm using jrec I still need an NFS server and I believe its purpose is to hand over the receiver.arf file when the receiver requests it. I *think* there are other ways to do that with linux or rioboot but just using ARM for nfs seems easiest.

This page describes the step for installing a rio driver for linux but the author is still waiting on a volunteer to write up docs for windows Rio installation: http://jreceiver.sourceforge.net/rio/jrec-install-rio.html

EDIT: Oh, and you can look here as well under the heading "Windows/Rioboot".

[....aaaah go ahead try adding a few more.
Well, maybe you should hold off unitl it can be confirmed there are no problems running so many units at the same time with the latest alpha.

On the hardware front:

- Main boards of Rio and Dell are *identical*. Even the same ROM code. They work out whether they're a Dell or Rio by reading some diode straps on the front board.

- There was only ever one HW rev of the boards.

- The front boards *are* different, as are the LCDs (Dell and Rio LCDs are 180 degrees rotated compared to each other), but electrically the same, save for a diode or two used to identify the front board type.

It's possibly you just have a flaky unit, though. The PSUs have sometimes been known to go strange, though as the receiver has a 12v input (powers the amp directly) but runs from 3.3v via a maxim DC-DC, there's a lot of headroom for power fluctuations before there's a problem. There's a 5v analogue regulator too, which just drives the analogue side of the DAC, the headphone amp and the digital volume control.

Hugo

Yes that is all ten to one server and no, I haven't noticed any problems due to the quantity of receivers connected.

We've had the original ARM software serving about 60 Receivers at the same time without breaking a sweat. This on Windows 2000.

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Dell and Rio LCDs are 180 degrees rotated compared to each other

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Interesting, perhaps the scrolling is simply a "viewing angle" issue.

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It's possibly you just have a flaky unit

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I have two rebadged Dells. They behave the same way.

Overall I'm very happy with all three units. There are some occasional strange opperational issues but nothing preventing the overall enjoyment of these players.