This player is now at my house, as is Kyle, and I'm trying to troubleshoot it. It does exactly as he stated... really strange stuff.

Summary:
As the empeg boots, the screen is normal other than a faint increase in brightness followed by a slow dimming before it blips out and goes black once the player is running. From there, black screen, no Stdby LED, no button controls. To get the display to wake up you have to start the player playing via hyperterminal, then it pops right up, though the stdby LED stays on. The display is VERY dim, and on forced DC mode, the dimmer settings have NO effect at all.

EDIT: I also just checked his config.ini and it is really stripped down... does this mean anything:

[synchronise]
seq_num=25
[wendy]
flag_amount=0
[custom]
wendy=
[searches]
amount=0
[VisualFavourites_AM]
count=0
[VisualFavourites_AUX]
count=0
[VisualFavourites_DSP]
count=0
[VisualFavourites_FM]
count=0


John... have you had any luck tracking this down?

Any other troubleshooting tips? What would cause a constant dim screen? I'm going to open it up and see if I find anything in the mean time.

EDIT 2: I'm also checking the fuse mentioned in thie FAQ entry