Finally plugged in my new 60GB unit. Powered up ok, but got stuck on the Rio logo and my computer tells me no unit is attached. I know its not me or the computer because my 10GB worked right out of the box. Is this one of those bum drive cable issues I've heard of?

Could be the infamous dodgy cable, but the only way to know for sure is to connect a serial cable, run Hyperterminal and capture the output on the serial port. The output should tell you what's gone wrong, or if you paste it here, someone will be able to tell what's going on.

I have no idea how to use hyperterminal, I tried to do it, but nothing happened.

Well you need to have a null modem cable to connect the Empeg's serial port to the serial port on your PC. After that's done there's a real good tutorial in the riocar.org FAQ.

Hi heather,

The directions to use hyperterminal are here: http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=FAQ&file=index&myfaq=yes&id_cat=7#82

Once you get hyper terminal set up and running, unplug the player and plug it back in. Then you will see a bunch of stuff go by on the screen. The last several lines at the bottom are what matters. Cut and paste the text in hyperterminal into a email. Describe your problem, then send the email to support@empeg.com.

Good luck!

Hyper terminal told me this:

empeg display initialised.
empeg dspaudio driver initialized
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg infra-red support initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004780).
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
Probing primary interface...
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:d7:28:0f:8
0
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 on 03:05


Can someone translate?

Looks like the cable issue. You do hear the hard drive spin up?

Looks like the cable issue. You do hear the hard drive spin up?


Yes I do. If I leave it plugged in, it will spin up intermittently at random intervals.

If it is spinning up and back down almost immediately, it could be a defective HD. When you plug it in, you should hear the drive spin up and seek for a second or two. It should remain spinning for awhile. The tricky part here is that you have a 60 Gig unit which has two 30 gig HDs. It will be hard to differentiate the sounds of both HDs.

If you feel comfortable around electronics, you can crack the case open and reseat the cables. If that doesn't help, try hooking up just the primary drive to see if it makes any abnormal sounds. Instructions on opening the player is up on www.riocar.org. Not hard at all, I upgraded my 12 Gig to a 30 Gig a couple of months ago.

99 percent, it's the problem described here.

Contact support and they'll get you fixed up.

It's probably the cable issue. Three of the 6 Empegs I ordered (before you ask : two for me, 4 for friends who don't own a visa card) also show this exact problem. Seems the problem is more common than I thought. The serials of those "problem" players are all in the 03010XXXX region.
I contacted David and he will send me three new HD cables once they have them in stock again. I suggest you so the same. Don't worry all will work out fine. Empeg has the best support known to man. (I'm strictly talking about EMPEG here)