Just dropped it onto a carpeted floor and the nipple has broked off the VFD . The player works fine AFAICT - it plays OK anyway, there's just no display. I've emailed support to see what my options are, i.e. (1) Send player back to empeg towers for them to fix. (2) I take it up to Cambridge myself and they do it while I wait (that's if they're not too busy). (3) They supply me with a VFD that I can solder in myself and finally (4) I get one from a distributor or direct from Noritake-Itron (they've got 157 in stock here in the UK according to their website).

Something I've noticed is that there's a bruise on the front of the square blocky bit of the rotary encoder for the volume control where it looks as though the glass nipple has hit it and this has actually caused the nipple to break off. Maybe the VFD needs to be mounted a little further away from the board.

ooh, just got a reply from support (boy those guys are quick!!) . They won't do it while I wait, oh well. I've just emailed them back to see if they'll sell me a bare VFD for me to fit myself.



Marcus (beaker)
32 gig (various colours)

Does this mean we can change your name to breaker?

Yes, I know that dropping your empeg is nothing to joke about.... I hope it never happens to me.

--
Toby Speight

ha de ha ha very funny



Marcus (beaker)
32 gig (various colours)

I had a scary moment the other day. Tipped over a can of Mountain Dew and it almost landed directly on my empeg. Anybody made a waterproof enclosure for their empeg?

-Kit

OK update time:
Empeg are going to send me a new VFD so that I can fit it myself. They'll send it overnight on Monday so should get it Tuesday morning. They did advise me against users repairing their own units but this repair looks straightforward enough.

So I've got a few days without a display but at least a solution is on it's way. And I can at least use Frank's excellent Displayserver in the meantime while it's hooked up to my PC .

Excellent service once again from the empeg team. I mean how many people are so dedicated that they are still working at 20:17 (the timestamp on the last email from empeg support) on a Friday evening? Well done to empeg & keep up the good service (just wish those Tuners would hurry up ).

Marcus (beaker)
32 gig (various colours)

out of curiosity, how much is one of the displays cost?


|| loren.cox ||

70 UKP. So that's near enough 100 USD give or take. Plus 8 UKP delivery which is about what it would cost me in petrol to go and get it, plus I'd have to take an afternoon off work. I don't know how much empeg slap on top, probably not much knowing them

Marcus (beaker)
32 gig (various colours)

I'm guessing that they're sending you a new display board assembly to swap, rather than just the VFD to solder in. Right?

That VFD would be a real PITA to solder into place.

Be very careful aligning the connector that hooks the display board to the main board, or you'll blow the new board, too.

___________
Tony Fabris

AFAIK it's just the VFD itself, I doubt they'd send me a complete display board, I'll let you know once I take delivery. Thanks for the advice about connector alignment. I'll be very careful, honest, I know these boards are rather delicate. I don't think the removal of the old VFD and soldering in the new one is going to be a problem, as I said before it doesn't look too difficult. I'll cut each of the leads running from the VFD to the board itself first so that I can remove the glass bit, then that'll make it easier to remove the leads without pulling the pads off of the surface of the PCB. I've been looking for something to Christen my new soldering iron with but didn't want anything this drastic.

To further make this a less than grand day I've just discovered that my Plextor CD writer has decided to give up the ghost . Oh well... c'est la vie.

Marcus (beaker)
32 gig (various colours)

Update time again . Got two emails from Empeg yesterday. First was from David in Sales to say my display would be sent out in the afternoon, second email from Peter in Dispatch to say that my display had been collected by TNT, also gave me the tracking number. Got home from work today to find a parcel from Empeg containing my nice new display. Looked at the invoice and had a bit of a shock to find that the price quoted to me was not including VAT on either the display itself or the carriage. Quoting part of the email:

"Total cost is £78. We can ship the replacement display on Monday (overnight before 12 delivery) or you can pick it up during office hours (cost would then be £70)."

Anyway, it was good of them to send me out a display and not insist that I send the whole player back to them so I'm not going to make a big thing out of it so I'll leave it there.
I did as I said in my previous post and cut the leads on the old display, desoldered the Blue wire from one of the leads and cut through the foam backing pads with a scalpel. The display then just lifted off. I desoldered & removed what remained of the leads from the PCB and made sure that all of the holes were clear of solder. I also cut off any remaining foam left on the board. I then found some more double sided sticky foam pads which were a bit thicker than the originals but seemed to be OK and stuck them on the PCB. After slightly bending up the lead which had to have the Blue wire soldered to it (it doesn't go through the board) I soldered the new display in place making sure there was a reasonable amount of clearance between the nipple and the volume control body. Then I reassembled the player in the normal way, plugged it into the player and "Hey Presto!!!" I'd got my display back just as it was before I stupidly dropped it. Actually it's better than before because the old one was starting to show signs of 'burn-in'.

Anyway, if anyone else has the need to replace their display then take heart, if you're reasonably competent at using a soldering iron you should have no problem doing it yourself - it's not rocket science as they say .

Good luck if you ever need to do it yourself.

Marcus (beaker)
32 gig (various colours)

Oops - I forgot those two vital words when I sent that email.

'plus VAT'

--
David
// I'm probably not speaking on behalf of empeg/SONICblue here...

OK, you're forgiven. How about a free tuner to help me get over the shock .


or maybe a job at Empeg repairing display boards .


Marcus (beaker)
32 gig (various colours)

Edited by beaker on 04/09/01 08:15 PM.

ARRGH! Add me to this list.

Fortunately, it only dropped maybe a foot and a half (slipped out of my hand). Unfortunately, it was on the driveway. Fortunately, it was in its carrying case. Unfortunately, a small tab on the case directly behind the top left of the faceplate was bent ever so slightly (enough for me to notice). Fortunately, I plugged the unit in at home and it boots, I can run and connect with Emplode, buttons and dial work fine, it plays (in the house), haven't checked the serial or USB yet.

Q: Is there anything I should do in shell to make sure the disks and hardware are A-OK? Or did the boot process already do that? I may be thinking a more thorough surface check is in order here. Comments?

Greetings!

Having already had a small bout of gravity with mine (survived very well, I would add), I can say that it is the distance and angle of impact that seem to make the difference. If you are running, display, sound and sync, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

If you want to double-check the disks, you could always run an fsck against them. Drop to shell, and try:

# rwm
# swapon /swapfile
# fsck /drive0 (Note: this may take a while...)
# fsck /drive1 (If you get an error, you might want to try fsck /dev/devicename)
# swapoff /swapfile
# rom
# exit
- try another sync

As for the bent bit, could it have been from the unit being opened while upgrading the drives? On the Mark 2a's,
sometimes the metalwork is a bit too tight to slide the top off without a little, um, persuasion with a screwdriver...
To quote The FAQ(tm):

It's a tight fit as the front tabs travel over the corresponding tabs on the main case, and levering them slightly
upwards with a screwdriver is usually necessary. Be careful not to let the screwdriver damage the sled hooks or
anything else inside the case.

Ahh, good, fsck is on there. I'll give that a, um, spin.

The angle was such that it didn't make much of a sound when it hit - more of a boing than a splat/bang/crash type thing. But still ... (shudder).

O-Kay ... here goes.

empeg:/empeg/bin# rwm



empeg:/empeg/bin# swapon /swapfile

Adding Swap: 16596k swap-space (priority -2)



empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck /drive0

Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)

e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09

ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda4 is mounted.

/dev/hda4 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.

Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes

Pass 2: Checking directory structure

Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity

Pass 4: Checking reference counts

Pass 5: Checking group summary information

/dev/hda4: 2451/152000 files (22.1% non-contiguous), 6777232/19451880 blocks



empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck /drive1

Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)

e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09

ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /drive1 is mounted.

fsck.ext2: Is a directory while trying to open /drive1



The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2

filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2

filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock

is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:

    e2fsck -b 8193 device

A quick cat /etc/fstab reveals:

#

# /etc/fstab

#

#           

/dev/hda5       /               ext2          defaults,ro    1      1

/dev/hda4       /drive0         ext2          defaults,ro    1      1

none             /proc          proc          defaults

Ooh ... might I need to add /drive1 ???

ls /drive1 does reveal stuff though ... the same structure as /drive0 actually (fids, lost+found, var). drive1's var is empty and drive0 var has config.ini et. al.

At any rate, it looks like /drive1 is part of the root partition. Is this a good thing?

No - wait! mount reveals the truth (I think):

empeg:/sbin# mount

/dev/root on / type ext2 (ro)

none on /proc type proc (rw)

/dev/hda4 on /drive0 type ext2 (rw)

/dev/hdc4 on /drive1 type ext2 (rw)

So now we continue:

empeg:/sbin# fsck /dev/hdc4

Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)

e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09

ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hdc4 is mounted.

/dev/hdc4 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.

Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes

Pass 2: Checking directory structure

Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity

Pass 4: Checking reference counts

Pass 5: Checking group summary information

/dev/hdc4: 2303/152000 files (22.8% non-contiguous), 6783244/19451880 blocks

Next silly question - should this be in /etc/fstab in the first place? (Something's mounting it, at any rate.)

Also, FWIW ...

empeg-car 2.00-beta3 2001/10/17.

3c168b32 DHCP name = lo

3c168b32 DHCP index = 1

3c168b32 DHCP flags = 0x8

3c168b32 DHCP addr  = 0.0.0.0

3c168b32 DHCP bcast = 0.0.0.0

3c168b32 DHCP mask  = 0.0.0.0

3c168b32 DHCP name = eth0

3c168b32 DHCP index = 2

3c168b32 DHCP flags = 0x1043

3c168b32 DHCP addr  = 10.10.10.205

3c168b32 DHCP bcast = 10.255.255.255

3c168b32 DHCP mask  = 255.255.255.0

3c168b32 DHCP Adding interface eth0



Prolux 4 empeg car - 1.1090 Oct 17 2001

Vcb: 0x408ce000

E !! mp3_decoder.cpp    1052: Failed to seek to offset 513351, error=0xc0044000

E !! mp3_decoder.cpp    1047: Failed to find valid sync after seeking to offset

513351, error=0xc0044000

Just what the devil does Bolloks (spelling?) actually mean?

You Brits have such great slang words, but usually I can't decypher them.

In exchange, I'll be happy to lend any of you my extensive American/Texan slang vocabulary ... though we may have to put it on a less public bbs :)

g

You need to watch more Brit TV and film. :)

Bruno

Just what the devil does Bolloks (spelling?) actually mean?

See this entry from dictionary.com. Methinks the last synonym in that entry is what he was aiming for. Heh-heh.

"Nevermind the bollocks ..."

In the case of this thread, it's not being used as a verb though. :) It works like so many other colourful words as a point of exclamation.

Bruno

So is it actually a *vulgar* word?

g

Testicles. Used in various contexts. In this case, to convey exclamation, eg. when you stub your toe on something or you drop your Empeg and you say "%Expletive%".