Well, my "strangest place for an empeg" has come to an end, at least temporarily. My empeg is dead.

Not the empeg's fault, and not the bike install's fault, either. More like an act of God.

I stopped at the local NAPA store to get a new alternator for my car, and not wanting to leave the empeg sitting out in plain sight (I hadn't yet followed msaeger's suggestion of getting a blank plate to hide the empeg while it was on my bike ) I stuffed it down in one of my saddlebags, under some clothes, figured it would be pretty safe that way.

While I was in the store, the wind came up, blew the bike over and it landed on the saddlebag containing the empeg -- probably about an 18" fall with minimal padding protecting the empeg.

Now, it no longer boots up. The screen lights up, shows the bootup logo, but that's as far as it goes. It acts just like a hard drive cable has come unplugged. That is not the case, however -- I have my empeg disassembled in front of me as I type this, and I can power it up and hear the hard drive spin, but no boot. Below is what Hyperterminal displays when I try to boot. I have no idea what any of it means... can anybody translate this into words of one syllable or less that I might be able to understand?

==========================================================================

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 v1.03
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux................................... done, booting the kernel.

Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg45 ([email protected]) (gcc ver
sion 2.95.2 19991024 (release)) #29 Tue Mar 27 18:21:21 BST 2001
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 80000267)
Command line: mem=12m temp=42
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 11008k/12M available (956k code, 20k reserved, 296k data, 8k 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)
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 ffffffff ' '
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
Could not find CS4231A (version=80)
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004500).
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 0x3333
smc_init couldn't find card
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

==========================================================================

Given the circumstances, I would guess that my hard drive is hosed. I notice that it seems to rattle a bit when I shake it or even turn it over in my hands. And while it is still technically under warranty, I wouldn't feel right about asking for warranty repair. If it doesn't work after falling onto a concrete sidewalk, that's hardly a failure of workmanship or materials...

Anyway, if anybody has any magic ideas about bringing my empeg back to life, I'm all ears.

tanstaafl.


"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"