The empeg will not work with a USB-to-44 pin adapter. The empeg will not work with a IDE-to-SATA adapter. Make sure to try getting the player working with the original Winchester IDE PATA drive that it came with first, before trying fancy stuff like drive adapters.

If you are using a proper IDE PATA drive, and the player can't see any drives, then look for the possibility that it has a problem with the IDE cable or the header as described here: http://www.riocar.org/FAQ/8/221.html#221

Once you have the player working with a regular drive, then, if you wish to update it to a solid state drive, it must be a IDE PATA drive of some kind, and your best bet at this time is to use a CF adapter. I have described and linked them in my first reply at the top of this thread, here: https://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/372225/Re:_Time_to_refurbish_my_MK2A.#Post372225

As Mark Lord taught us, the reason that a CF adapter works is because it is, at the low level, an IDE PATA interface. Things like USB adapters and SATA adapters will not work because they don't properly emulate and IDE PATA interface. (Note: There is a type of newer compact flash drive called "CFast" which also won't work because it, too, is not an IDE PATA device. The only kind of CF device that will work in the empeg is a regular CF card like the one I linked above.)