(I have access to the machine in question here)

The symptoms are that the buttons don't work at all. None of them. The unit comes up in standby mode (usually), and at that point, again, the buttons do nothing. Pressing, turning, or otherwise.

I got a bash prompt on it, and things look reasonable in there. Only /drive0 is being mounted, to /dev/hda4, which has some 9Gig assigned to it. There are a couple of little partitions, /dev/hda2, 3, and 5 if I remember, which have 2-3 megs assigned, and are not mounted. hd6 is the swap and looks good.
Note that when the unit boots, you see the RIO logo and the 'initializing' stuff flash by, then the screen goes blank and it's in no buttons work mode.

Also, it seems like each time the unit boots, the screen is a different brightness level, from very dim to normal. The owner feels it might be associated with monkeying around with the power connection on the back of the unit?

rjf&