A few days ago my empeg suddenly started making an awful noise right in the middle of playing a song which had always worked fine. Since then, it won't boot anymore. It gets as far as starting the player app and then it hangs in an endless loop saying "Loading music databases..." and "Loading playlist..." over and over again.

At the console, the following messages are displayed:

empeg-car bootstrap v1.00 20000601 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg52-hijack-v340 (root@ibbm) (gcc version 2.95
.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Wed Jun 18 18:40:14 EDT 2003
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 7, serial number 90000594)
Command line: mem=12m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 10960k/12M available (976k code, 20k reserved, 328k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005980).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, 19077MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=38760/16/63
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 ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:12:02:5
2
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...j)5change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
Starting player
Hijack: intercepting config.ini

hijack: removed menu entry: "Hard Disk Detection"
hijack: removed menu entry: "Tuner RDS Control"
hijack: removed menu entry: "Serial Port Assignment"
khttpd: listening on port 80
kftpd: listening on port 21
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00-beta13 2002/07/24.
player(9): memory violation at pc=0x02034e00, lr=0x0216f13c (bad address=0x16173
63c, code 2)
pc : [<02034e00>] lr : [<0216f13c>]
sp : bffffa34 ip : 00000000 fp : bffffa84
r10: 00000000 r9 : 0216f130 r8 : bffffab4
r7 : 00000000 r6 : 0000060e r5 : 0216f0e8 r4 : bffffa40
r3 : 16173638 r2 : 050006c2 r1 : 0216f13c r0 : 0100015a
Flags: nZCv IRQs on FIQs on Mode USER_32 Segment user
Control: D038117D Table: D038117D DAC: 00000015
Function entered at [<02034cec>] from [<02034ba8>]
r10 = 00000000 r9 = 00000000 r8 = BFFFFAB4 r7 = 00000000
r6 = BFFFFA88 r5 = 0216F0E8 r4 = 021810E4
Function entered at [<02034a90>] from [<02036864>]
r8 = 0210F6CC r7 = 00000000 r6 = 0216F0E8 r5 = 00000C49
r4 = 00000C1F
Function entered at [<02036680>] from [<0202f7f8>]
r10 = 00000000 r9 = 0210F400 r8 = 0214A1A8 r7 = BFFFFD88
r6 = BFFFFD84 r5 = BFFFFD80 r4 = BFFFFD8C
Function entered at [<0202f494>] from [<0202f1e0>]
r10 = BFFFFEE4 r9 = 00000001 r8 = 0214A1A8 r7 = BFFFFEE8
r6 = 00000054 r5 = BFFFFDF4 r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<0202f1a0>] from [<020310f0>]
r6 = 00000054 r5 = FFFFFFFF r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<02030eec>] from [<0203121c>]
r10 = 020311B8 r9 = 00000000 r8 = 0210F0E8 r7 = 00000000
r6 = 020000C0 r5 = 00000001 r4 = BFFFFF64
Function entered at [<020311b8>] from [<020c5f30>]
r5 = BFFFFF64 r4 = 00000001
Function entered at [<020c5e54>] from [<02000104>]
r10 = 00000000 r8 = 00000000 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 00000000
r5 = 00000000 r4 = 00000000
Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Abnormal player termination
Player received signal 11
Starting player
Hijack: intercepting config.ini

The last part (starting with the line "player.cpp etc...") is repeated over and over again.

This has got me scared. Could the filesystem be corrupt? Would it be safe to reinstall an image? How can I determine whether a corrupt filesystem is indeed the problem and if so, how can I fix it and is there any chance of compounding the problem by trying?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give!