Okay, weekend is over, thanks for the suggestions so far. I opened up the Empeg again today. I removed the IDE cable, recrimped the connectors. Tried re-booting, no disk found. Rebooted with main connector being pressured into the motherboard, same. Connected the drive to the end of the cable, same deal. Again, there are a couple of pads (various locations) on the motherboard connector that show very little solder on the top of the pads. Wiggling the connector doesn't show any obvious signs of loose pads. So because it booted once, there's not a possibility that it is not a bad hard drive? Or a hard drive going bad?

How about a clean boot log to look at?


empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([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 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kernel.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg52-hijack-v417 ([email protected]) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Sat Jan 15 19:12:21 EST 2005
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
Checking for extra DRAM:
c1000000: wrote ffffffff, read e91ba9f0
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 30102917) 16MB DRAM
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15008k/16M available (984k code, 20k reserved, 368k 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 206f6972 'rio '
Found custom animation at offset 0x98b7c
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 button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004280).
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...
Probing primary interface...
hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT PL, ATA DISK drive
hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT PL, ATA DISK drive
hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT PL, ATA DISK drive
hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT PL, ATA DISK drive
hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT PL, ATA DISK drive
hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT PL, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT PL, 57231MB w/8192kB Cache, CHS=7296/255/63
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:d7:26:0b:65
Partition check:
hda:hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x01
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x01
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x01
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x01
ide0: reset: success
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x01
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x01
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x01
hda: read_intr: status=0x59
hda: read_intr: error=0x40
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 0
unable to read partition table
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 recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump... attempt to access beyond end of device
03:05: rw=0, want=2, limit=0
dev 03:05 blksize=1024 blocknr=1 sector=2 size=1024 count=1
EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:05