Entempo Spirit impressions

[seeberg]

Oh yeah, I've seen the Rubato, but I don't find it as interesting as the Spirit. A $200 price tag with a 1.8" hard drive doesn't stand out, even if it is mass storage compliant.
The only other person at HeadFi I know of that owns a Spirit is Hella356, and I haven't really seen anyone put the Spirit down(especially in a fanboy manner, like I've heard Mistic River do from time to time, but I have nothing to do with that) besides the obvious, crappy looks and firmware bugs. Of course, bugs can be fixed and like my review states as my opinion, the crappy looks can be a real turn off to thieves.

,
Abe

 

[YamiTenshi]

Well, just put in my order at amazon.

The thought of having a 100+gb external hard drive that just happened to play music was too tempting. Good price too, even if I replace the hard drive to a 100gb it would still be cheaper then the Neuros 80gb. If I really don't like it for music then I'll just convert it to a full time external hard drive.

Chances are I'll buy another DAP in the (near

) future, but this will do for now.

 

[seeberg]

If I remember correctly some 80GB drives cost half that of the average 100GB drive, so if you want to save some money, that might be worth keeping in mind.
Oh, and I hope you're aware that surplus comuters had it for $99.98 with free shipping. That's the best price pretty much anywhere.

One more thing I should mention, it's possible to reformat the Spirit's hard drive if there are problems, since it's recognized as a removeable drive, it should be no problem if the player is being unruly for you. I haven't had to do this with mine though.

Tell us all what you think of this DAP when you get yours! (And I'd like to know what stock firmware you're running when you get yours, as this can be an indication if the hard drive is from a bad batch. Version .024 units are the "good" ones, and as soon as you get yours, update the firmware immediately.)

,
Abe

 

[YamiTenshi]

I got mine from amazon for $100 also.

Do you know if anyone has actually changed the hard drive? Is there a guide for it? Pics? I really don't want to be the first to do it unless I know it will work.

 

[seeberg]

I think there are people that have done it, and in principle it should work, considering that the format isn't proprietary, and putting the firmware on another drive to interface with the GUI/OS of the Spirit hardware should certainly be possible. If you know anyone with a spare notebook drive lying around, or any stores that will allow for refunds, you could test a drive with it, but of course at the price of its warranty.

Pics are available at dapreview.net and the yahoo entempo mp3 players group, although pics for that site require you to have a yahoo account(I happen to have one). They have pics of the internals, and the HDD its using, which is (should be) a Hitachi Travelstar 20GB with 8MB cache. Personally, I'd like 80+GB's with 16MB cache, but it's gotta stay under $100.

,
Abe

 

[jpelg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by seeberg I think there are people that have done it, and in principle it should work

Has anyone confirmed that the firmware will recognize hard drives greater than 32gigs on this, or any other UMS-type DAP (such as Archos)?

 

[seeberg]

Maybe someone at dapreview might know? Austonia, perhaps? I did see in some comments over there someone did own one, but I don't know if they've tried the mod. The manual gives no clues as to maximum song limitations, and the firmware's "About" section says only the following:
"Spirit 20
Revision 0.0xx
Copyright (c) 2004
Entempo
Disk Capacity
19077MB"
Of course, that info probably doesn't help. On Entempo's site, it says the player conforms to FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems, but I don't personally know what that means. I don't know that much about computers, unfortunately.

,
Abe

 

[hardbop]

Can you take a couple comparison pictures of the Spirit so we can get a better idea of the size and bulk of the DAP?

 

[seeberg]

If anyone can point me in the direction of some Creative Zen Xtra pics, sure. The Spirit is almost the same size, and if there's pics of the xtra, side by side ones with the Spirit won't be a problem.

,
Abe