I've slightly rewritten the disk drive upgrade FAQ entry and posted it in the FAQ on riocar.org. I will be adding photographs to it sometime soon, I hope. In the meantime, if anyone sees any errors or omissions in it, let me know.

Of course, you did this after I finally did my disk upgrade yesterday.

Amazingly, everything all worked out and I'm now the happy owner of a 12+48GB MarkII...

The only complications I had were:

- When I took the screws out of the side to release the drive tray, the metal bracket was frozen to the side of the case on one side. I ended up having to apply some force, which caused the shockmount rubber bits to come out of the metal bracket, still frozen to the side of the case. No big deal, though. With the tray removed, I could then safely apply some force to the bracket, freeing it from the case, and the rubber bits could be squeezed back into the metal bracket once more. (I took photos, lots of them. Hey Tony, you want 'em?)

- I didn't have any spare jumpers laying around, and the IBM drive that I bought came with nothing but a lot of foam padding. The jumpers I was able to buy at Fry's worked, but they're too big. It doesn't look pretty, but it works.

- Finding new screws to hold in the new drive was rough. Neither Radio Shack, Home Depot, nor Fry's had the exact screws used in the Mark II. Fry's had screws in an assortment bag (small parts you may need when assembling a PC) that had the corect threading, but different heads. They worked well enough, but you have to be careful not to overtighten since you've got about 0.5mm more screw than you need.

Sounds like most of what you've said here is at least covered in the new version of the FAQ.

I don't give details about where/how to buy jumpers and screws because it's going to be different depending on where you live, etc.

If you want to send me a link your photos, that would be cool. Thanks for the offer. I've got some very specific photos I want to get, and I want them to be in good focus (a lot of cameras are blurry when doing close-up shots), so I won't guarantee I'll use yours. But I'll definitely check them out and if they are exactly what I need, I'll use them.

Tony, here are some shots i took of my drive upgrade, i can't remember if i posted them or not. Have a look, you're welcome to use any of them for the FAQ, and if you need clearer ones i'd be happy to take 'em.

Thanks, I was looking at those before, and the reason I didn't use them was becase (a) they didn't show the exact things I wanted to illustrate, and (b) the shots were kind of blurry because the camera doesn't like doing close-ups.

If anyone is really interested in taking photos for the FAQ, I'd be happy to accept submissions for the following things, but note that Dionysus has already offered to take these pics for me when he does his upgrade, so you might end up duplicating his work...:

- Shots must be in sharp focus. If possible, light it from the top with a bright fluorescent light so that the camera flash is not the only thing illuminating the scene.

- Front-on picture so I can point out screws to remove face. Maybe even with the allen wrench in the act of removing.

- Shot of all buttons, fascia, knob, lens, set aside.

- Picture of unit side so I can point out the screws for removing the hard disk tray.

- Shot of gently lifing the cradle assembly out of the player.

- clear picture of where the Glue was added to keep the ide cable attached to the drive during shipment. Preferably with the drive still attached to the shock tray.

- Shot of disks set on an angle on the edge of the player as you transfer files without the drives fully screwed back in. Preferably with a bit of paper under them illustrating how to do it without making the bottom-of-the-drive electronics contact metal.

- Shot of stand-off washers installed

- Shot of insulating tape on tray. If you can do yours without overlapping the tape strips, that's what I intend to recommend (don't want double-thick tape strips pressing on drive bottom).

- Shot of master/slave jumper in place next to plugged-in IDE cable.

- Shot of properly-working shock mounts (not popped out).

- If you had to glue your shock mounts back in, a shot of how they are glued.

Well, here are the pictures I took while doing the upgrade. Some of your wishlist items are on here, but most aren't. Super high-res versions (2Kx1.5K) of these pictures are available, if you really want.

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~dwallach/empeg/

Those are very nice photos. You're right, some of the items on my wish list are covered there. I will see whether or not I can get more photos that have some of my other wish list items covered-- I may end up using some of those pics. Thank you.

One note, the jumper you need for the slave link is a 2mm jumper; 0.1" jumpers are too big and will fall off.

www.farnell.com definitely sell the correct ones; they're not used widely in PC bits, so most people don't have the right ones kicking about.

Hugo

While we're talking about jumpers, I saw there were a bunch of these 2mm jumpers on the empeg motherboard. What do the various jumpers do? Is there a jumper that could be safely, umm, borrowed for use on a hard drive without effecting how the empeg works?

Mardibloke has some nice pics of his upgrade:

http://www.mardibloke.co.uk/pics/empegupgrade/dcmalbum.htm

Not really, no. There are only 2x 2mm jumpers on the board and they are the PSU isolation jumpers for 5v (analogue) and 10v (analogue). The 0.1" jumpers are for 5v (digital) and 3.3v (digital).

Note that you can't even steal one of the 5v jumpers - there are 2 in parallel - as the current draw for the HDD is quite large. I had stolen one on my own empeg and was having HDD trouble... when I put the second link back on, all was fine!

Hugo

http://www.riocar.org/upload/faqpics/drive_faq.htm

Like some others, I had trouble removing the drive cradle.

One technique that I found to help in removing the drive cradle is to [bold]gently[/bold] pull straight up on the ribbon cable to raise the front of the cradle. Once the front is free, then lift by the sides of the cradle.... Not sure if this goes without saying for most of you guys, but it helped me. I've had to take my empeg apart for two disk upgrades and to secure jumpers twice and this has been the way I did it.

You could do it that way, but it's not very easy and I can't imagine it's very good for the connector too.

This is the way I do it : I unscrew the four screws, but leave one in. Then I put the Empeg on it's side and unscrew the fourth on top. That way, the tray can't fall onto the print. It's also easier to remove, it almost "drops" out.

I think I got my jumper from a old floppy drive I had laying around. Havent had any trouble with it at all.

Sean

I've now added pictures to the new disk upgrade guide.

Thank you, Mardibloke and DWallach for supplying the pictures.

Looks great Tony!! And thank you to everyone that contributed pics and video. Like most testosterone-based beings, I prefer the pics to text any day. As the empegs community matures, I am sure the number of users attempting this mod will be on the rise. I know I am almost out of disk!

Thanks for the credit Tony, the excuse for doing the photos was just what I needed to justify the upgrade to 96gig