I think I've heard this reported on the BBS before, but I was never afflicted with the problem until now. I'm wondering if anyone has any reports on what to do about it.

When I first got my Empeg, it was installed in my VW GTI. I never had any trouble with starting the car while the Empeg was playing. The Empeg would briefly go dark/silent as I started the car, then pick right up again where it left off. It did not reboot. It was connected to the radio power lead, which, in that car, was an always-on power connection.

In my new Honda Accord, the voltage drop that happens when I start the car seems to be more severe. The Empeg reboots instead of just briefly going dark. I have tried it both by connecting to the radio always-on power lead, as well as wiring directly to the battery. In both cases, it fully reboots every time I start the car.

But it gets worse: Sometimes, during this reboot, it doesn't fully come back up again. It sits there at the kernel boot screen (the Empeg logo) and never goes past it. I have to pull it out of the dash and put it back in again to make it boot properly. This is intermittent.

Note that this reboot happens whether the unit is playing or if it's in standby mode. When it does this reboot while playing, there's a pretty bad speaker pop associated with it, and the 1k resistors on the outputs don't help. When it does the reboot while in standby mode, I can hear the amps turning on and off again, with a milder pop sound.

I see three separate problems here: One of them is my refusal to connect the Empeg to the ignition-switched wire. I want the Empeg to run when the engine is off and the key is disconnected. Let's just take that one as a given and see if I can solve the other two problems, which are:

- The starting-car voltage drop is beyond the Empeg's threshold for a "go dark, pause, and come back" cycle.

- But the voltage drop so brief that it's somehow confusing the firmware so that its reboot cycle is screwed up. Perhaps it's something with the IDE drives and their spinup time?

My first thought was to get a lightning cap from Crutchfield, but jeez, those are a hundred bucks a pop. Is there a less expensive solution? Anyone?... Anyone?... Bueller?...

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144