I've had similar symptoms to these. I thought it might be the drive cable. After contacting support, I received a replacement which seemed to improve things for a while. Soon the problem returned though.

I double checked that the cable was securely connected paying particular attention to the connector on the motherboard which can be pulled loose when you are putting the drive tray back in place. Again this seemed to fix it for a while.

Eventually the problem returned and with nothing left to try I contacted David at support again. He said to send the unit in for investigation.

It turned out that there were 3 dry solder joints between the IDE connector and the motherboard. I guess that it was managing to load up data from the drives every now and again which enabled it to play for about 10-15 minutes from the RAM before it ran out. Less if I skipped tracks (thus emptying the RAM buffer and causing it to need to access the drive again).

After David's repairs it now works perfectly. Hats off to David by the way. As many have said before, the Empeg support is the best I've ever experienced. When you consider that the player has been EOL'd and that I bought it from someone else who had bought it at a huge discount, it makes the standard of service even more remarkable. Thanks David.

Andy.