To perform a ram test, wait until the unit falls over (the other unit had a heat-related fault in the chip) then power cycle it and press Ctrl-T at the bootup prompt - it then goes through a basic hardware test.

Neat feature. Is that Mark2 only? I couldn't get my Mark1 to do anything with Ctrl-T.

By the way, Jon's problem could very likely be the RAM thing. His unit worked fine for a while (enough to upload a few albums), and it only went wonky on him after it had been powered up for a few hours. So if it was heat-related, that would make sense.

Also, it's not loose cables on his unit. Since the upgrade attempts were failing on the partition pump, it sure sounded like a disk problem. But Rob had just gone home for the night (it was about 9 or 10 o'clock UK time), and Jon wanted to know for sure if it was just a loose cable.

So he asked me to talk him through the lid removal, which I did. I hope you guys don't mind- I was confident that he knew what he was doing (and he did, he was very careful with it). I figured that even if the cables were fine, you would have at least wanted him to rule that out before going to the trouble of shipping it back. And I hated to see a new owner so distressed over his new toy malfunctioning.

He looked inside and noted that the hard disk cables were both properly connected (he has a dual-disk unit). So it's not the cables. He didn't remove the disk cradle at all, he just opened the lid and looked at the connectors.

After putting the lid and the face back on, he was able to install the 1.0 upgrade flawlessly and was able to use Emplode just fine again (as he had been able to do when he first got the unit). So I'm guessing it'll run for another couple of hours before going south on him again.

Too bad about the RAM chips...

___________
Tony Fabris