I plugged in my drives from my spare player (30gb and 80gb fujitsu drives). I still get no hard disk found, although it comes up much much faster (almost instantaneous versus maybe a minute. Here's the boot log from that attempt:

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([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 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg52 (rob@aphex) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315
(release)) #12 Tue Apr 1 18:51:41 BST 2003
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 10101862)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15024k/16M available (964k code, 20k reserved, 372k 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 Universit
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)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
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 636f6972 'rioc'
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 d0005580).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM
Probing primary interface...
hda: FTJHTRU MHL2300@T, ATA DISK drive
hdb: FTJHTRU MHV2080@T, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: FTJHTRU MHL2300@T, 7935MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=16382/16/62
hdb: FTJHTRU MHV2080@T, 7935MB w/8192kB Cache, CHS=16382/16/62
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3348
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:8) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:0b MAC 00:02:d6:22:06:46
Partition check:
hda: unknown partition table
hdb: unknown partition table
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...03:05: rw=0, want=2, limit=0
dev 03:05 blksize=1024 blocknr=1 sector=2 size=1024 count=1
EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:05

It is identifying both of the drives. With the first set of drives (a 30gb IBM Travelstar and a 30gb Fujitsu) it only identified one drive.

I don't have much for magnification lying around, but to the naked eye I can't see anything wrong with the header connections. I'll have to get a magnifying glass.

Now for the really depressing news. I went to try the two 30gb drives in the spare player and now I can't get it to take any power. It's just dead - the little red light on the motherboard is not going on. This happened before with this player, but when I gave up on it and came back later it was fine. So now I have two problems and zero working players. Help!!

Thanks, Bill