Well, I'd say that I wouldn't rule out a bad cable because it's been working for two weeks - the bad crimp can show up sooner or later...

Some people have reported (at least temporary) success in squeezing the connector with pliers, assisting the failed crimp... This might be the first thing to try, as it's easy and might hold you over until you get a new cable from the empeg guys.

Also, you said that in case the unit has two drives (like mine) one could be taken out so that the connector could be used with the first drive. In this case, how do I know which drive to take out, and which one stores my music (approx only 2 gigs now)?

The bad crimp seems to be limited to the middle connector, which in the empeg connects to the first drive (the one on the right if you look from infront of the empeg) which also normally is the master drive.

The music, when uploaded, is stored on whatever drive that happens to have most free space at the time, so for a player with two likesized drives the music will be spread over both drives.

You can copy any music from the master drive to the secondary with a command like the this:

rwm
cp -ax /drive0/fids/* /drive1/fids
rom

(also check out the Drive Upgrade FAQ, Step 7, as this is a thing sometimes needed to be undertaken in a drive upgrade).

In this case you could also copy the files in /drive0/var/ to /drive1/var/
with

rwm
cp /drive0/var/* /drive1/var/
rom

to copy the database etc (if you don't, when you start the player with only one drive, it'll take a minute or two to rebuild the database - and will do so every time until you sync with emplode.

Note: you'll also need to remove the jumper that designates the left drive as slave.
You can instead place it on the right drive, and it'll turn up as the slave drive when you later reconnect it with a good cable.

Also, be aware of the hot melt glue that is applied to the IDE connector (at the underside as the sit in the cradle. Remove the glue with a scewdriver or similar before trying to remove the IDE cable connector.



/Michael