The standard solution to this problem, during the days of official support was as follows:

- Weird behaviour, lockups, stuftering or distorted sound: data path failure.

- First inspect serial boot log. CS4231A recognised and initialised OK?If yes, keep reading. If not, probable chip failure. You are in big poo-poo. However, this is not the end of the world. Contact support (me) sometime in the next month or so when I will be restarting repair work.

- second, crimp/change cable. If you have the grey with pink stripe original cable, this can be crimped successfully if you do it properly. If you are unsure, change cable to later grey/charcoal stripe. If you have grey/charcoal, you cannot sucessfully crimp it without destroying it. Improvement? If no, keep reading.

- third, case open, drives out. Inspect the IDE header, especially if you have a 2A/RioCar as this was the model it happened most frequently on. If you have a Mk2, it is unlikely, but not impossible, that this was the case.

If all this is OK and the player is in trouble, then it's the data on the disk, ie. YOUR MUSIC.