For some reason my player won't work through the car docking sled or my Mark Lord home dock.It only works when I plug the ac plug into the back of player.
I thought it could be the faulty AC connector(which has been replaced before) but doesn't that cause it to work in AC mode all the time.Would it cause this also?

EDIT:actually its now booting and rebooting when in the dock on its own!!

Make sure you don't have problems with the wiring on the docking connector (wires inside the player going from the connector to the motherboard), make sure you don't have a loose screw rattling around inside the player shorting out components. Make sure the docking connector itself is tightly screwed down (it has special screws that allow it to wiggle even when the screws are tight).

You are right that it is unlikely to be the AC connector. The problems with that connector usually manifest themselves as the player not properly sensing its home/car mode.

Also make sure there isn't a piece of crud stuck in the docking connector wedged in where the pin connections are made.

The wires appear to be OK
I didn't find any
Screws are tight with a slight wiggle to the connector
No crud noticed

As the player just sits in the dock it reboots or just restarts and then it will be fine for a minute then it does it again also sometimes ill see the battery icon flash on the player.This happens both in the car and in the hone dock.
I think I even heard it beep like a computer motherboard beeps.

EDIT:Ok i'm definately hearing beeps from the player now.

Now that I think about it, the rca outputs for the front and rear didn't work correctly I had to use one channel from the front and one channel from the rear.
I first thought it was this problem but when it happenned with a different dock plug I wasn't sure.Also I tried to use the AUX in rcas once and they wouldn't work either.
I don't know if related to the rebooting problem

Quiet beeping sound coming from inside the player is likely hard disk motor trying to do things. Rebooting, battery icon, etc., all are adding up to the same problem: Not enough juice to spin up hard drives.

Why player gets "not enough juice" from docking connector, but gets plenty from AC connector, I have no idea! Are you using the same power supply in each test?

Some RCA outputs not working and others working, sounds like the docking connector wires are screwed up. But if you have tried it two different docks and get the same results, then that is really weird. So I wonder... interior connector that connects docking connector to motherboard... Off-by-one?

The beep is not quiet but actually quite loud.As loud as my computer bios beep.It doesnt happen all the time ,just sometimes during one of the reboot cycles.

I have the player in a Mark Lord home dock and if I plug the power supply directly into the back of player ,it works fine.When I put player into dock and plug power supply into dock,the player is screwy.

I think you are on the right track.There is something going on with the connections from the docking connector to the motherboard.There is only one way to plug in connectors.
When I plug player into dock sometimes it takes a minute to power up before it does the rebooting thing.I guess there is a faulty chip or component that controls that stuff but everything appears fine to my untrained eye.

The loud beeps are probably just the High Temperature Warning (Hijack Menu).

The other problems are definitely connector related.

-ml

What does the high temperature sensor monitor?Is it just a general temperature of the inside of player or a specific component?
Could a chip or some other component(resistor,capacitor,diode) be overheating and causing this problem?

Do you mean the docking connector on the player or the connector to the motherboard or both or none?
The wires to both connectors appear in good condition,with no loose wires that I can see.

Hm. Hang on a sec.

Is the temperature warning something that can be configured differently between AC power mode and DC power mode?

Can the temperature warning be configured to shut down the player automatically when it busts a threshold?

If so I wonder if this is just flash RAM that's screwed up and has returned some noisy settings data at boot time. Up to and including messing up the setting for Dock Detection, thus making the player go into DC mode even when in Mark Lord's Home Dock. And then some of the DC settings are screwed up such as telling the player to shut down if the temp gets too high, but the temp number is wrong. And maybe even bad enough to have screwed up the EQ settings (or at least the selected EQ setting) so that there is a messed up four-way EQ configured, thus making it seem like there was no output from one of the four channels.

Here is the hyperterminal output from in AC mode if it helps

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 kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg52-hijack-v488 (hijack@rtr.ca) (gcc version
2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Fri Feb 15 10:29:26 EST 2008
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
Checking for extra DRAM:
c1000000: wrote ffffffff, read 00000000
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 30103118) 16MB DRAM
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15000k/16M available (992k code, 20k reserved, 368k 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 University Computer Society NET3.039
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)
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'
Found custom animation at offset 0x99380
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
show_message("Hijack v488 by Mark Lord")
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initiali
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0ed, the device was in an unknown
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
Starting kswapd v 1.5
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012ed driver
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005d00).rred, registers were:
empeg RDS driver initialisedinitialized:
empeg power-pic driver initialised sizeA1100 UART
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg
02 11 e0 59 00 00 03 Error: a SA110
empeg single channel IDE
Pr
Probing primary interface...

Commands leading to t
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0xff0000 read 0x0000RT
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0xff00
ide_d
CR FR SC
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0xaa00d/Feature_Namend cus
ide_data_test: wrote 0x55

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:26:0c:2
Partition check: initialisedion
e
Partition check:hda5 hda6
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4 After command completion occurred, re
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0donly.isk driver initia
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH 4096
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, run

Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hdc4 but got error 6
Error mounting partitions (possibly already mounted)
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
Starting player
Timezone: Atlantic/South_Georgia
Hijack: intercepting config.ini

hijack: removed menu entry: "Serial Port Assignment"
khttpd: listening on port 80
kftpd: listening on port 21
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.01 2004/07/06.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Jul 5 2004
Vcb: 0x4086d000
Dead temp.sensor, status=0x00

I still haven't gotten this to work.
I'm wondering if I fried something.
I recently had this installed along with the factory Toyota CD/Radio head unit.
I took the amp/antenna turn-on wire from the Toyota and tied it into the Empeg's amp turn-on wire and ran that to my amp. Is it possible the Toyota sent too strong a signal and shorted out something in the Empeg that only affects it in DC mode?
I remember noticing that when the Toyota radio was on,the Empegs standby light didn't blink.As soon as I turn the radio off,the light started blinking again.

You'll get weird problems if you did tie the two amp remote lines together. I don't know whether it would have blown anything though.

It's like when someone calls into CarTalk, and they spend ten minutes trying to carefully diagnose the issue, and they keep throwing out theories, and then one of them says, "yeah, but if that were the case, his check engine light would be on", and the guy goes, "oh, my check engine light *is* on!"...

*sigh*

In other words... that's something you should have told us right from the beginning.

Yes, tying the accessory lines together could easily blow a fuse or fry something. Thats a +12v line being attached to another +12v line. It wasn't meant to be hooked up that way. The thing that you were trying to do there requires a special kind of autoswitching box such as the Sony XA-39II instead.

Click on the word "Repairs" at the top of this page, and get it on its way to Stu at Eutronix.

Or two diodes... But how is the stock radio and the Empeg connected to the amp? Both of them tied together and connected to the amp? That could also create funny things...

Stig

If he tied the amp/antenna remotes together, then he probably tried to tie the RCA outputs together, too, which might account for the problem he had where his RCA outputs did not work correctly either.

My big worry is that he didn't really specify whether he tied the car stereo's *amp* remote to his empeg, or its *antenna* remote to his empeg.

The antenna remote from his car stereo might be one of those that's designed to power an amplified antenna, in which case it might put out quite a bit of wattage, so it wouldn't be much of a surprise that it fried something on the player.

Your right I should have mentioned it at the beginning but in my defense,it wasn't immediately causing problems so I didn't suspect it.
BTW the engine light is on
This is a 2008 Toyota Corolla.
The wires I tied together were the blue amp remote turn-on wire from empeg harness and the wire from the toyota radio that is called the "antenna amplifier" wire.I do not have an antenna that goes up and down,it is stationary.
I think thats what I have.

Well I think found a work around.
I took an unused power supply plug and put that into the connection on the player.The player now thinks it is in AC mode.Then I used hijack and force into DC mode.Slid it into my home dock and player boots and appears fine.I haven't tried it in car yet but I imagine it should work fine.I reconfigured how my amp turns on so there won't be any need to use the Empeg's or the Toyota's wires for that.