Ggrrr.. Having repeated problems with my empeg (RioCar) not recognising the hard drives. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've had the thing apart and made sure that the cables are all secure, and they seem to be, and I can't see and sign of cracks in the solder holding the connector onto the mainboard.

Also, today whilst it was working, the sound kept breaking up - as if it was having trouble reading the data from the disk, although I don't know how this could be as it's obviously not like a CD that can get fingerprints all over it and skip.

Below is the boot sequence as copied from Hyperterminal. Anyone got any suggestions? Thanks.


empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 (hugo@empeg.com)
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux................................... done, booting the kernel.

Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg51-hijack-v289 (root@tbird.localnet) (gcc ve
rsion 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Tue Jul 30 12:47:31 EDT 2002
Processor: Intel StrongARM-11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 10101920)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15076k/16M available (928k code, 20k reserved, 356k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea Universit
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 636f6972 'rioc'
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005280).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
Probing primary interface...
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman (erik@vt.edu)

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:22:07:8
0
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:0

Greetings!

There was a defective batch of drive cables that were shipped. It is likely that you have one of them. You should contact support for a replacement. As far as I know, there is no way to tell that you have a cable from the bad batch by eye.

This sounds like what i was getting. Intermittent hard drive not found errors, the player would sometimes stutter . I replaced the cable which helped for some time, then finally it turned out to be a dry solder joint. Sending the player in for service fixed my problems.

Furtive, please check all of the possible problems listed here.

I *did* used to have a defective cable when I first got my empeg, but that was replaced and it has worked fine ever since. I think a dry joint may be the cause of the problem. I have emailed support, and as I only live a stones throw from Cambridge, hopfully I can personallly drop my player off for them to have a look at.

Tony - yes, I have read, and re-read the FAQ to try and diagnose my problem. Thanks for reminding everyone about it though

I hate to point out the obvious, but perhaps the actual hard drive is going bad? Perhaps you should try with one drive then the other?

Matthew

Is there any way to test the drives? Will both drive have the required boot information on it or will I have to reformat them one at a time, and therefore loose all my playlists, etc?

bump...

Hm? Oh, sorry. I was asleep.

Is the hard drive stress test non-destructive? I think it is, but I am not 100% certain... If it is non-destructive, you can run /bin/hdstress to give your drives a workout.

Right, I've been trying to diagnose this.

With both drives connected, It only gets as far as the sick penguin screen

With just one drive connected it *sometimes* boots ok, but sometimes still fails

So, I'm guessing either a dry joint where the drive connector is on the main board (I *think* I see a crack on one of the joints, but maybe not) or a duff cable, or something else...

I'm going to try and drop it off to David some time in the week...

I'll just have to sing in the car for now

Huge huge thanks to David Moss at empeg for fixing my player today. Top class customer service.

Apologies to Hugo for parking in your space!