Well, I have made some progress on debugging my Empeg. Wow, I never thought I'd say that I needed to debug my headunit!

I opened her up this last weekend, and changed the ribbon to the end connector. That seemed to solve the problem with the hard drive ending up "missing" once in a while. While it was open, I installed the 1 amp 200 volt diode inline with the switched power.

BUT

I'm STILL getting the weird syndrome where the power comes back on after I leave it in the car! I actually sat in the car and waited last night, and it took around 10 minutes. It didn't go through a 'partial boot' where the logo, etc is displayed. That little blue light started blinking at me. Mocking me. The unit is unresponsive, so pushing the buttons and turning the car on doesn't change its state. Only pulling it out of the cradle and pushing it back into place makes it reboot.

I'm running the 2.11 Hijack kernel, I've installed a diode to kill the negative spike bug, and I've reseated the laptop drive.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here? I'm tempted to install some kind of kill switch on the darn thing! I took apart the dash again to see what might be going on after the problem, but all the voltages looked ok. Main power was showing 12.5 V, switched power was showing .03 V. My car (Audi) has a floating ground... maybe something to do with that? Also, could the grounding of the amp be a problem? Current traveling back up the 12V amp turn-on line? Ugh, this is getting really frustrating. Anyone who can help me wins a case of beer of their choice. I'm not kidding, I will find a way to ship it internationally if I need to!!!

Thx

player stats: mk 2a, 2.11 w/ hijack kernel. HDD cable fixed, diode installed
car stats: 1998 Audi A4

- James