1. You can upgrade the original H-40 Fireball hard drive to 120GB. Due to the limitations of either the IDE chipset or IDE device drivers... I havent figured out which yet... the maximum space that the OS will recognize is about 130GB. I recommend the older Maxtor 4R120L0 or 4R160L0 media Quickview drives which work much quieter in the Fireball than the Western Digital drives that come with the unit. These can be found on ebay and are super quiet. Even a 250GB Quickview will work... though you will still only get roughly 120GB.
2. To perform the upgrade, you need the upgrade CD + a new drive. I can help out with the CD. If you need it post a message with your email and I will get back to you (I won't publish it to the public). If you don't feel comfortable with opening up and pulling the guts out of your unit, I could do the whole thing for you but you would need to ship me your Fireball.
3. You can also upgrade the fan. The original fans get noisy when they wear out. I will post some info on how to replace the originan and make it quieter.
4. You can also upgrade the CD Drive. I have successfully upgraded to the 32x. I will post some info on how to do that as well.
5. Escient no longer posts the PC software to access your Fireball. I have a copy if you need it. There is actually a better piece of software out there to access the Fireball from your PC called Conduit. It allows you to pull Files off your Fireball and put files on it (bi-directional). It was written by James Slepicka a couple years ago and is no longer available on-line. Its a little quirky but if you want to backup your Fireball H-40, this does the trick. I have a copy if you want it.
6. You can control your Escient through the RS-232 ports. I use an AMX system to control it using a touch panel. If you want some tips, I can help. A simple system can be created for under $200 if you get the pieces on Ebay. Escient has some quirks though that make accessing radio stations and custom folders difficult, but if you want regular commands like Play, Stop, Random, it works great. I even created an AMX Landmark configuration that will control the Escient using the PLK-IMS and PLK-DMS keypads. If you want info, let me know. The basics include: AMX PLB-CF2 cardframe + PLC-MCU + PLC-SER cards; a serial cable to connect the unit to the Escient; a Viewpoint VPT-CP touchpanel + PMB-RF; and you will need the landmark software to program it which I can help out with too.
7. You can network multiple Fireball H-40s together and have a huge virtual playlist. It works great, but has some quirks. Specifically that when you pull a Fireball out of the network, it retains the song titles from the other Fireballs.
8. You can get these units for roughly $200 on ebay. No it won't synch with an iPod, and you can't use AAC encoded music, but it is a very straight forward music server. It will synch with a Compaq iPaq from several years ago.
9. Can you customize the Escient screen layout that you see on your TV... you sure can. Want a different color? Want to get rid of the ad at the top?... you can do it if you reinstall the OS using the upgrade CD. I tried it once... did not seem to affect anything. Will try to post some experiments.
10. What is the best option for USB Ethernet on the H-40? You can find the Belkin USB Ethernet adapter model number F5D5050 on ebay. It works great. You plug it into the rear USB port, and you can connect to your home network.
I have not yet upgraded an E-40...
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