No Hard Drive Found, Contact Support (only in car)

Sheesh. Now my patience is gettting tried. It works in home but now after latest upload and synch it doesn't work in car. Like the Subject reads, there's no hard disk activity. Resynching doesn't do any good. It still doesn't work in car. What gives? Version 2.0b11 no Hijack installed.

BTW, this has happened before but pulling out the unit and putting it back in would usually fix the problem. Not this time. Going to work, back in 5 hours.

Greetings!

Perhaps a bad cable? You might want to contact support, get their permission to open it, and see if the hard drive cable is loose. Does it only happen in the car, and does it fail all the time?

It worked fine in the home but not in the car. I took it back into the house and resynched it and it worked in the house. I put it back in the car and it still didn't work. I said heck with it and went to work. On the way there I kept taking it out and sliding it back in. Finally it worked after taking it out a few more times. I remembered the v2.0b11 "20min" bug and after thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that it started working around 20min from the first time I saw the error message. Coincidence?

So, once it started playing, a few minutes later it started hiccuping, like it was a bad MP3 file. Although I know for a fact that that particular file wasn't damaged. It also happened on the next song. And when I tried to fast forward, the buttons were frozen. So I guess I hit another "20min" bug. I pulled it out again, it rebooted, and it was fine for the rest of the day, except for the usual intermittant remote control response.

I think I just got a lemon and I should send it in. But I don't know if I can go without my baby for more than a day. What's the typical turn around time?

To summerize my bugs:

The screen in "Track: Info" mode is dimmer than the rest of the modes

Intermittant responding to the remote

Occasional "No hard disk found, Contact support" message in car only

Occasional song hiccups and button freeze

Vertical "shadows" cast by digits on bottom level of screen

Other than those it's running great!

-Cheers-

I'm reasonably certain that the no HD problem, the 'frozen' fast forward and hiccups that you've just described are caused by a bad HD cable. I saw all of these problems until I replaced the cable. The bad cable is a PITA as the problem is intermittant. Factors that can affect whether it will work seem to include vibration, temperature and mounting angle. Sometimes very gentle percussive maintenance will shift the cable so that it operates - other times not. It is likely that pulling and re-inserting your empeg so many times eventually did this. But then after a few minutes, road vibration or temperature change caused it to go out again, and then the song hiccups severely as the player tries, sometimes successfully, but mainly unsuccessfully to fill the buffer with music from the disc. When you fast-forwarded, the problem is further compounded because the player needs to open the new file - which it cannot do.

Of course the 20 minute 'stuck jiffies' bug could also be in effect if you haven't installed hijack - IIRC, this should be fixed in the next release from the empeg guys. But the drive cable is definately suspect IMO.

BTW, Every time you reboot, the jiffie clock gets reset, so I don't think that it was the cause as described in your first paragraph.

I think that your deciding issue is the display issue as it is the only one that cannot easily be fixed without sending the unit to Empeg.

Greetings!

I would recommend loading hijack to test for the jiffies. If it were the cable, it would not be so specific about the location (always working at home, always failing in the car). It is possible, but it wouldn't hurt anything to give the software load a shot. You can always reload the commercial build if it doesn't help.

Hey great advice guys. I'll load up Hijack and report back to this tread after a few days of eval.

Yeah, I'm noticing the same problem.

I've even popped open the unit, made sure the connectors are connected, and put it back together without much luck. Also, when I pulled it out of my car this morning (after the car was sitting in the garage all night), the unit was warm, as if it had been running.


Any ideas what the next thing to try would be, replace the cable, call customer support?

hi. i do have the same issue... i had beta11 and v262 of hijack runnin' and the player suddenly hanged (visual freezes - after 10secs or so also the music stopped // only way to 'reboot' the player was to unplug it since rebooting with the hijack-function displayed me the message 'No Hard Drive Found, Contact Support').
i've now installed ONLY beta11 again and the problem still occurs...
can someone help?
tx
Sevan

ok, i now installed ver 1.03 again and it still hanged after pressing the 'next'-button several times...
could it be that the player doesn't have enough power due to the fact that i have a power-amp connected to the 12V-battery as well?
(btw: it's a markII-player, i didn't mentioned it before)
rgds,
sevan

*SIGH*

I thought this wouldn't happen to me, but today at lunch... exact same symptoms. Works on AC but not in car on DC. The past two days i started to get the stutter problem others described as a symptom... i figured it was some weird hijack issue, but alas after finding this thread... it must be connected to this. I stopped to get gas, got back in the car and no hard drive found dammit. I'm going to email david and see what he says. I guess i'll crack it open tonight and see if there's any loose cables and whatnot.

did any of you resolve this issue?

Is this catching or what?
Last night (after several weeks of no problem use) I put the unit into the car and got the
No Hard Drive blues. I reinserted the unit several times without success.
When I got home I plugged it in and same thing. I did some reading on the BBS and
so decided to leave it til the morning then check for loose wires/connectors.

Tried it first thing, same again; jiggled with the connector, same thing.
Left it a couple of hours, now back to OK!
Put it in the car, again OK!

Will see how long it goes for now.
As per Bob's previous note, what should I do if it goes again?

It sounds like your problem is a little different than the other problem. They have problems only in the car, but never at home. I would guess that your problem sounds more related to the IDE cable, while theirs seem to be more location dependant.

AHA!!!!

I finally had time to open up the empeg, and the second i had the lid off the problem was obvious.

THE IDE CABLE HAD WORN TO THE BARE WIRE FROM RUBBING ON THE LID!!

The pin 1, 2, and 3 wires were exposed on the IDE cable. You could see the marks from the plastic on the lid of the empeg... the metal is pretty abrasive, and i guess all the vibrations over the past 2 years just wore down the cables, and they would make contact with the lid every once and a while and not work. My solution was to tape the cable up with electrical tape, as well as the lid above where the cable sits. Works perfectly now. David is sending me a new cable, so i'll just be sure to have the interior of the lid covered with non abrasive tape once i get the new cable on.

You guys might want to check closely for cable wear, and tony, you might want to add this to the FAQ... i see this as being a problem a LOT of people are going to start having over time as the cables wear down.

PHEW!!

Interesting. I would suggest that the cable should not be rubbing on the lid at all, and if it is, there's something wrong with the way it's routed inside the case. Mine doesn't rub like that.

My Mk1 had a problem with the cable rubbing on one of the motherboard jumper pins, but that's a different thing.

Also, I would guess this would affect only empeg Car players and not Rio Car (which has deburring on the inside).

Rob

Someone at the owner's meet commented that my Mk2 was shiny compared to their Rio, and I looked closely and compared them. All of the edges on my Mk2 were rounded and deburred and the surface was polished. Whereas his Rio's edges were all sharp and the surface was not polished.

Yeah, my rio's edges are super sharp. It cut the bag the second time i put it in there. Overall, i've gotta say i like my mkII better than the mkIIa rio version. I'm still using the mkII even though it has less memory and storage space... for some reason it just feels way more solid. I'm even thinking about just putting the 60 gigs from the rio into the empeg.

I'm even thinking about just putting the 60 gigs from the rio into the empeg

That's exactly what I did.

Greetings!

I know what you mean, but the extra RAM in the 2a is why I migrated from my old unit. I needed the space when I used to run displayserver's web interface.

Hrmm.... i could always just switch the mainboard from the mkIIa to the mkII chasis....

I even added David's movies to the FAQ site showing how to remove the mainboard.

Course, you still gotta be careful with that display connector...

Yeah like I said, the Mk.2A is deburred on the INSIDE.

Don't ask.

Rob

Heh, OK, I won't ask.

Same symptoms for me, have 2.0 b 11 and hijack 280 installled. Incidentally the no hard disk error appears intermittently I have also replaced the hard drive cable.

I started getting these symtoms that Curlykicker has described and like others in this thread ONLY in the car:

To summerize my bugs:

1)The screen in "Track: Info" mode is dimmer than the rest of the modes
2)Intermittant responding to the remote
3)Occasional (more and more often)"No hard disk found, Contact support" message
4)Frequent song hiccups and button freeze

At first I thought it was the headlight dimmer problem since only symptom 1) appeared but now I get all 4 symptoms. Has anyone confirmed if a new ide cable will "fix this only in car problem"?

OK, I answered my own question. I swapped the HD cable out of my other empeg and the problem went away.