I upgraded my 36GB 2-drive player to a ~100GB 2-drive player by replacing an 18GB IBM drive with an 80GB Toshiba drive. I did manual formatting and copying and all was well.

Now, I intermittently get a screen message "No hard disk found" or something like that. Power down/up, sometimes four or five times, and all is well again.

I've checked cable connections, jumpers, I've recrimped the cable, checked solder joints.

Any suggestions? Is there a known serial number range that has "dodgy cables"? My S/N is 080000480. Other than the cable, all I can think of is the IBM drive doesn't play nice with the Toshiba drive...

Any suggestions?

Here's part of the console output when it fails:

Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Mar 26 2003
Vcb: 0x4054d000
ÿIf 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-v413 ([email protected]) (gcc version
2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Tue Aug 17 18:05:30 EDT 2004
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
Checking for extra DRAM:
c0c00000: wrote ffffffff, read e91ba9f0
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 7, serial number 80000480) 12MB DRAM
Command line: mem=12m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 10952k/12M available (984k 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 ffffffff 'ÿÿÿÿ'
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
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 but
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004e80).
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...
hdb: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS, ATA DISK drive
hdb: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS, ATA DISK drive
hdb: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS, ATA DISK drive
hdb: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS, ATA DISK drive
hdb: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS, ATA DISK drive
hdb: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS, ATA DISK
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hdb: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS, 76319MB w/0kB Cache, CHS=9729/255/63
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:d7:10:01:e
0
Partition check:
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 recommende
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...rnel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:05

Note that it can't seem to find the IBM drive on hda. When it was failing, I did unplug only the Toshiba drive (2nd drive postion), and it did boot up fine and could find the IBM drive.

thanks for any help/advice.

-gbeck

Bad (loose) slave jumper on the second drive?

Checked the slave jumper already, even replaced it with a different one. Don't think that's it. But thanks for the suggestion.

-gbeck

I just realized I have a backup Empeg from the Rio fire sale. Moved the cable from the backup unit, still fails. Then put drive sled into the backup unit, still fails. So whatever it is must be the drives. Each drive does work fine by itself.

My next step will probably be to replace or just get rid of my smaller drive. Is there a quick way to move it's data and merge it with my new second drive (that already has stuff on it)?

thanks.

-gbeck

Hm. Each drive works singly, but it fails intermittently when they are together?

Any chance it's an AC adapter not supplying enough juice? Got a spare adapter to try?

I replaced my 18GB IBM Travelstar drive with the 20GB Fujitsu drive from my backup Empeg, and copied everything over. So far, it's working fine. It will take a week in the car to verify.

Looks like the IBM drive doesn't play nice with the newer Toshiba drive.

Thanks for the help and advice.

-gbeck