I have an Empeg2 installed for 8 months. Last week I decided to upload HiJack kernel in it. I put the kernel in the player and added a couple of games (with great difficulty). Two days after that, I used the player at home (in a party) where it played for about 3 hours. Then I got it back to my car, where after a while a problem occured. All the display went dimmed. The luminance falled in all the display apart from 2 columns near it's right side. These two columns where very bright (normal) and in every pixel of them, they contained the summary of all 'open' pixels of the same line. The problem kept going for 2 or 3 days more. When the player was cold (off for a long period) the display was dimmed, but the two bright lines (columns) didn't appear for approximatelly 5-10 sec. If after that I unplugged the player and put it back on power again(reset) the columns kept appearing. Propably it was not due to HiJack, but who knows? The last 5 days, the problem has been inverted. All the columns appear bright (as they should be) and the two that previously where very bright (by diplaying the sum of each line) now display only the pixels they should normally do, but only if the pixel has full color. The full colored pixels in these two columns now appear dim, and the half color pixels do not appear at all.

Any suggestions/ideas on solving this problem?

I seriously doubt HiJacl plays any role in this - too many has used it for to long for something like this to popup...

Most issues of garbled displays / dimmer problems have been either a broken fuse or resolved by adding a small capacitor to the circuitry.

Your best bet is contacting support (david@empeg.com IIRC), but they're closed over the holidays. If your player was one that came originally from the big firesale you might want to toss in a mail right now anyway - just be ready to wait for a response until January.

/Michael

thanx a lot for the info

...Sounds like you just got a bad display, or had a metal shaving or some bit of conductive material shorting out the PCB board. (Since the 'data' is written to screen by pulsing transistors, those two columns were probably shorted out, drawing all current from all the other columns.. Once the short wasn't shorted anymore, the screen returned back to normal. However, those two columns are now dark because they were probably 'burnt-in' and weakend by the always-on from the previous days..)

Contact David, and see if you can return it and grab a new display..

Me.