If you've recently bought a RioCar in the "fire sale" as a backup unit, but since it's a backup unit haven't plugged it in yet, I'd suggest that you do so. Rio must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel -- I received a unit a few days ago that clearly hadn't ever been tested, as it appears to have a loose hard drive cable and won't even boot.

I'm sure Empeg support will make things right for me, but if you wait too long before testing your new "spare" unit... who knows? Best to check now just to make sure, right?

Hmmm This is a Semi normal occurance. The HD cables are supposed to be hot melt glued onto the drive so they don't fall off

What makes you say it hadn't been tested ? As far as I'm aware all the units were tested when they were built, but the unit has since been shipped long distance at least twice since.

The advise of testing backup units sooner rather than later is good though.

Well, the fact that the unit came new out of the factory box and *didn't even boot* would seem to me to be a pretty good indicator that it hadn't been tested. Also, as far as I'm aware all late-production units did have hot-glued drive cables so the cables shouldn't just pull loose of their own accord.

However, David Moss of SonicBlue has already responded to my initial email and we've arranged to get my new player fixed. Evidently a small number of players had badly crimped IDE cables which may themselves pull apart if the unit is really roughly shipped.

For what it's worth, this unit was *terribly* packed compared to my first two Empegs (Mark I, Mark II shipped from England). It was packed nicely in a small box that was packed with *no filler material at all* into a larger cardboard box, basically guaranteeing that the inner box would fly around the outer box and get a succession of violent bumps during shipment. A friend bought a spare player at the same time as I did (about a week ago) and had the same experience.

Given that the problem may be related to a dodgy cable, and may show up only after the unit's been shipped -- okay, I was probably off base saying the player had never been tested, but I'll reemphasize my advice to test your player ASAP after receiving it if you've ordered a "spare" player lately!

a small box that was packed with *no filler material at all* into a larger cardboard box

This is a Digital River/Sonic Blue trademark. Feel lucky that the large box was properly sealed. One of mine wasn't.

Don't even get me started on how MY unit arrived to me...it went from England to Croatia, back to England and then onto Canada..suffice to say the box looked like space junk after it had crashed-landed on Earth once it was finally in my hands...Funny, I never got an outside box but I did get lots of loose cellophane wrap My player worked tho...

Hot glued to the drive, yes. Glued in any way to the mainboard, no. Mine has been flawless (60gb), but a friends 10gb shipped with the motherboard connector off, and another just got his back from an odd problem, and it also had the motherboard cable come off.

In the entire time of owning my Mark 2 20gb, the cable never came loose. Something must be looser on the MK2a connectors.

It was packed nicely in a small box that was packed with *no filler material at all* into a larger cardboard box,

Oh, you really got cheated then. Many of us received our players with as many as a dozen, one person even claimed two dozen, little plastic shipping peanuts in the larger box.

There seem to be a number of people in the SoB shipping department who just don't give a damn.

tastaafl.

All the players were fully tested at the factory, with a ~2 hour burn-in and HDD test. The problem is the HDD cables which the factory switched to without getting our approval first - they may be glued on, but the crimping is bad in a much higher percentage of units than is acceptable.

Luckily, this is an easy fix for support to handle.

Hugo

The packaging is designed to be shippable - all we do at the international store is wrap the box in cellophane. Putting the box into a larger box with no filler is a bad move, but I guess the US warehouse think otherwise.

Rob

mine came and the display did not work but I sent it out for warranty work and got it back, it works great now!