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rio car dot org FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)



Category: Main -> Software and player operation questions
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·  Why do the visuals disappear every time I put it in the car? 
·  I just got my new player and I have many gigs of MP3s to install. Is there anything I need to keep in mind? 
·  Why can't I add more than one song at a time? 
·  What does the flashing LED on the faceplate mean? 

·  Do I have to put the player into standby mode before I pull the plug?
 (Entry last updated on June 18th, 2002)

The player is designed so that you can completely remove power from it at any time. You can pull the plug whenever you want, even if it's right in the middle of playing a song. When you apply power to the player again, it should pick up right where it left off.

Here's how it works:

  • When you select or shuffle a new playlist, it writes the current song running order onto a special area of the hard disk. This is the only time that the hard disk is mounted read-write while the player is in the car, and it is very brief. And it's designed so that even a power loss at this time would not harm the player. Otherwise, the hard disks are left in read-only mode at all times.

  • When the power is lost to the player (and I'm talking about complete power loss here, not just turning off the car's ignition), the player uses its last dying gasp of electricity to write its current position within the song running order into flash RAM. It also writes a few other useful things into flash, things related to the player's current "state".

  • When power is re-applied to the player, it re-reads the current running order from this special hard disk partition, then reads the entry from flash RAM to locate the proper position in this running order from which to begin playback.
There might be an occasional, very rare instance of the player forgetting its current position within the playlist. If that happens, it will seem to go back to its last-saved position from the previous power pull when power is re-applied. This should only happen once in a blue moon. I personally haven't seen this happen to my player in months. If it happens to you all the time, for instance, if it happens to you every time you turn off the car's ignition, please click here for information on how to fix it.

There may also be an indexing issue with Variable Bit Rate MP3 files, discussed here. However, this is totally unrelated to pulling the power.

The only time when it's dangerous to pull the power is when it's in the middle of a synchronization operation, or when you're hacking on the player's hard disk at the shell prompt and you've manually placed the disk drives into read-write mode. If you lose power at this time, you might corrupt the files that were being transferred at the time of the power loss. If so, those files would need to be sent to the player again, and then a disk check should be performed.


·  Can I copy MP3 files back onto my PC from the player? 
·  Is there anything I should keep in mind when I grab files from the player? 
·  Can I back up the player's playlists and music files? 
·  What is the best way to organize and listen to my music? 
·  How can I keep my PC and my car player in perfect synch? 
·  How do I upgrade the firmware on the player, and will it erase my music files? 
·  Is it bad for the player if it gets too hot or too cold? 
·  Do I have to use the remote, or can I do everything from the front panel? 
·  What do all the buttons do? 
·  What's this I hear about a 'Stun/Kill' button on the remote control? 
·  What is a parametric EQ, and what does the 'Q' parameter do? 
·  Where can I download a list of EQ presets? 
·  How do I know what the hard disk is doing? 
·  Does disk space get wasted if I make a second copy of a song in a different playlist? 
·  What about editing/renaming multiple copies of the same song? 
·  How can I be sure that I've deleted all copies of a given song? 
·  How do I make albums play in the correct order? 
·  How do the Tweak Order functions work? 
·  How does the 'Ignore as Child' option work? 
·  What in the world is a 'Wendy Filter'? 
·  How do the Bookmarks work? 
·  Can I delete songs from the player's front panel? 
·  How can I tell which tracks I have marked with the 'Mark' key? 
·  What search terms can I use in the Advanced Search box in Emplode? 
·  What is this 'Soup View' I hear other people talking about? 
·  What do the little letters mean on the Info:Track screen? 
·  When I move the player between the car and the house, what does it do differently? 
·  Are there any 'Easter Eggs' in the player? 
·  What do the various symbols mean on the 'Aux Info' screen? 
·  Can I reset the number of plays and other statistics? 
·  Why does it play clusters of artists or albums? 
·  How do I cancel out of a synch? 
·  How do I skip to the next album or the next playlist? 
·  What is a FID? 
·  What happens during a synch, and what do the stage numbers mean? 
·  Can I use a USB-to-serial converter dongle with the player? 
·  What are some other good tricks for using the player? 


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