Hello, my Empeg loving friends. I have a quick little question for you. Anyone else out there seen this in their bootup:

Probing primary interface...
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive (Note: hdb but no hda... DOH!)
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
ide0: unexpected interrupt, status=0x80, count=1 (Note: Oh. There's my hda. It looks mad.)
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, 19077MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=38760/16/63
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:d7:12:02:3
c
Partition check:
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
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...VFS: Cannot open root device 03:05
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs o (Note: And then it's dead.)

My Empeg hardly ever boots right now. And when it does it hardly ever stays booted (if I'm playing music.) Anyone have any ideas for me? (I asked tech support but I'm getting impatient.) Thanks.

Sounds like what happens when other people have had a loose drive cable or jumper that fell off. Check those first.

Ok... Lemme just get the case off... Now where's that crow bar? Hmmmm... :) I'll get back to you when I get the case off. Thanks...

Just in case...

Don't crack the case if you want to keep your warranty or haven't already done so... but i'm guessing you already know that. =]

As for cracking the case, my warenty sticker was hashed to pieces a long time ago by the mounting cage. (Wink) Plus I can't see the point in sending it to England just so they can check something that'll take me 2 minutes to check. All well...

Well... Uh. Unfortunately all the cables were nice and tight and the jumper is most definately there. It looks like hda (Primary Master) is dying quickly. (Or maybe just dead.) Unless tech support or someone else gives me a miracle cure. So now my next bombshell question. How do I salvage whatever music I can off of my dying player before it's gone completely. I tried the display server backup util but it gives me funky errors and the HD is flakey anyway. But there has to be a way to get my music off the second drive at least; the one that's still alive and kicking. (I think that's where all the good stuff is anyway.)

Thanks for your help.

P.S. Anyone remember what the warenty on these are?
P.P.S. I've said it before and I'll say it again. WE NEED A BACKUP UTILITY!

I had a drive issue over the summer, but mine was a little more apparent - I had some noticable grinding from my drive.

Shipped it to the UK, waited nervously, and about 6 days later she arrived in beautiful condition.

Work was performed professionally, quickly, and contact with the company was excellent.

Fear not about sending the player for repairs. The only problem you'll have is getting along without it for a bit. :)

There is a known issue with IBM 20s - they need stand-offs as pressure on the spindle causes problems with some drives.

If your drives are not sat on standoffs (washers), then the drive will be replaced under warranty. We do this as a matter of course on any units that come back for any reason.

Hugo

Going without my empeg for more than about 18 hours is cause for serious withdrawals. (First symptoms are shaky hands and irritability followed by a cold sweat and paranoia.)

And I didn't mean to suggest that empeg's technical staff and customer service is anything but top notch. I've had my player freak out once or twice (even had to send it in once) and Empeg's customer service is better than any I have ever seen. (Side story. I bet a guy at work that I would get a response to my emailed question to empeg within 5 minutes. As we were turning to run to the snack machines, my mail alert chimed and there was my response. Total time taken, about 1 1/2 minutes. That's what I call freaking awesome service.)

Here's what my man David Moss had to say on the matter:

> It is likely to be coincidence that this happened
> when you installed the 2.0
> beta. This could be a dodgy drive cable -
> particularly since 'bad interrupt'
> isn't common for drive errors. Have you tried the
> other connector on the
> drive cable?
>
> Let me know your address and I'll get a new cable in
> the post to you.
>
> If that does not rectify the problem then you
> probably do have a dead drive.
> I'll ask Hugo about it and see if he has any
> suggestions.
>
> Regards,
> David

Props to him and Hugo. (Oh... And Hugo... No Standoffs. What does that mean for the life of the drive that is still alive? Will it be dying soon as well?) So I'm still not totally sure on what exactly is broken. Cable or drive. (Though it sounds like drive.) Sounds like I'm going to be shipping my baby back to its homeland. But I still have one burning question. What will become of the music on the drive that's still alive? And what of the one that's dead? (It's hard to find good concert recordings of The Cure.)

Thanks for your overwhelming response, support, and help. This is one of the big reasons I love my empeg.

P.S. I take back any ill I said about 2.00 B3. Now I’ll just complain about 20 GB IBM laptop hard drives. >:)

Now I’ll just complain about IBM laptop hard drives

Which is bad news for this fella... I've got 2 IBM DJSA-220's in mine. No problems, the one drive is over a year old, the other maybe six months. (crossing fingers)

I'm sorry. My condolences. I hope you don't have any trouble. Mine is about a year old. (But it's had very heavy use.) Have you considered backing your stuff up? (I'm kicking myself for not keeping a good backup.)

Backup.. Hehe. I did backup awhile ago to desktop HD but actually lost THAT HD. Oh, the irony...

I plan on doing another one to a newer desktop drive, but the backup process takes a very long time. Having to re-rip my CD collection would be pretty rough, though I do have a lab at work with about 20 PC's that I could use for such a task.

The music that is on the drive that is still alive is fine. As long as it doesn't die you won't loose a thing :-)

I sugest the following:

Swap good and bad drives so that empeg boots from the good one (your primary is sick, right?) - this is the main reason for partitioning both drives in the same manner, including installing the OS. Your database will be all wrong now, but don't worry about that. Install development image. Install either 'dumb ftp server', or Debian mini-distribution. Use ftp to copy all /drive[01]/fids/* files. (If you install Debian, it might be easier to use ftp client on empeg.) When the drive is fixed, dump everything back, delete files database, fids and playlists from /empeg/var, reboot (don't forget to run ro first) and let the player rebuild the database.

Besides, if you ship the unit to Cambridge, the guys there might be able to rescue and restore the content of your disk if you ask them nicely and if you are lucky that the drive still sort of functions when it arrives there .

Good luck!

I may give that a go. (Though I have more faith in the Empeg Geniuses than myself.) Where do I pick up this 'dumb ftp' install?

And one other question. When I do the final database rebuild, how will it know what FIDs are what songs? I thought it discarded all ID3 tags and kept all that information in the music database.

Thanks for the fix. I'll let you know how it turns out. (Assuming I can get FTP working.)

Ah, sorry, stupid ftp server, not dumb (that's why you couldn't find it). It was introduced here (beware, the link in the message body is not correct any more, the archive is now here), and discussed several times since. I did not try it, but several users reported good results (and some others reported problems, IIRC...)

ID3 tags are not discarded from the tune files. MP3's are intact - it's just that player doesn't use them, nor does emplode update them when the user changes tag files. This is irrelevant, though, since you will back up (and later restore) both tune (*0) and corresponding tag (*1) files, bypassing emplode entirely. Three database files you will be deleting (and player rebuilding) are a kind of digest of all *1 files and those *0 that represent playlists.

Good luck!

To finish up this saga...

Even though I've sorta openned up my empeg, they're still going to take it in under warenty. :) What's more, David has offered to transfer anything that's still accessible to the new drive (s). (Even if the drive is dying or mostly dead.) Props to him again. Have I mentioned lately that Empeg's support and service staff kicks serious ass?

I wish they had a 'testemonials' section on their web page. But anyway... Even if I do end up loosing a chunk of my music, I call this a happy ending. And in the future, I will be better about regularly scheduled backups.

Thanks to all of you for your help and support. (My empeg withdrawal support group. he he he...) And I'll catch you all in some other thread a bit later. Peace out, my friends.

-Network Error
-Totally satisfied customer