I'm reasonably certain that the no HD problem, the 'frozen' fast forward and hiccups that you've just described are caused by a bad HD cable. I saw all of these problems until I replaced the cable. The bad cable is a PITA as the problem is intermittant. Factors that can affect whether it will work seem to include vibration, temperature and mounting angle. Sometimes very gentle percussive maintenance will shift the cable so that it operates - other times not. It is likely that pulling and re-inserting your empeg so many times eventually did this. But then after a few minutes, road vibration or temperature change caused it to go out again, and then the song hiccups severely as the player tries, sometimes successfully, but mainly unsuccessfully to fill the buffer with music from the disc. When you fast-forwarded, the problem is further compounded because the player needs to open the new file - which it cannot do.

Of course the 20 minute 'stuck jiffies' bug could also be in effect if you haven't installed hijack - IIRC, this should be fixed in the next release from the empeg guys. But the drive cable is definately suspect IMO.

BTW, Every time you reboot, the jiffie clock gets reset, so I don't think that it was the cause as described in your first paragraph.

I think that your deciding issue is the display issue as it is the only one that cannot easily be fixed without sending the unit to Empeg.