I suppose the reason that I am looking at this from the standpoint of a possible hardware failure is that a couple of days agow I realized that before this last fall semister I was preparing my car for yet another semister of commuting to and from school. One of the things that I had done was install a larger transmission cooler. to do this I had to fab a bracket. I had decided to weld it together while it was bolted to the car. well.....this is where the problem most lilely occured if it is a hardware failure.

after re-assembling the car I went to start it. it caughed and sputtered and refused to start. (this was odd because it ran fine when I pulled it into the driveway) After some initial troubleshooting I removed the cars ECU and did a visual inspection of the ECU's components. I was supprised to find one vary cooked (burnt) board. The welder back fed through the cars chassis and did a number on the ecu. Fortunatly I had a spare on the shelf from one of my old cars.

I am worried that the possibility of damage having been done to my empeg could be a reality.. I had suspected nothing because when I checked to see if it worked after cooking my cars ECU it opperated perfectly. However the first time I went to plug it into my network at home the ethernet did not work. I am hoping that it is simply a setting or some other software related thing. however I do need to try to look at the possible hardware side of this problem. I did a visual inspection of the players board however it appears to look okay.