Empeg was working then i took it outside to the car , then i put it into the car sled and the standby led comes on and blinks on and off, but the player wont come on.

So i bring it in the house and hook it up with the ac adapter and the same thing happens and now the player isn't being detected by emplode.

Any ideas?

Connect to it via HyperTerminal or some other terminal emulator and post a log of what it reports on powerup.

Heh ok,
Now its not coming on, sometimes it will come on and other times i have to keep cycling power before it comes on. I always get the flashing blue LED though.

Am i doing somethign wrong?

I tried connected it to hypterminal but nothing shows up as, the player isn't coming on

Unless it's totally f*cked, it's producing something. Chances are you've got something wrong with your serial port setup.

Nah im pretty sure the serial port is set up right. The player came on and was working again then i pulled the ac adapter a cable and put it back in now its not coming on again and nothing shows up on the hypterminal

Did you see anything come over the serial port when it booted properly? If not, then there's something wrong with your serial port setup. It might be that you're using a straight-thru instead of null-modem cable. It might be that you have an app already listening on that serial port. It might be that you didn't set the option properly in hyperterm.

But if you don't see anything and the player works at all (that is, there's not smoke coming out of it), then it should produce something from the serial port. Take my word for it. Without that data it's unlikely that we can do anything to diagnose your problem more than take guesses.

Im using the cable that came with it, the hard drive doesn't spin up or anything the only thing that happens is the blue led on the back comes on and the blue led on the front blinks on and off.

the only thing that happens is the blue led on the back comes on and the blue led on the front blinks on and off.

When the player is working properly, the blinking LED merely indicates standby mode. It's not something simple like... You haven't pressed a button to wake it up?

i tried pressing buttons to wake it up , still doesn't work

I have also tried connecting it to another computer still no luck

There have been some other threads where people have described a player whose standby light will come on but the player will not boot. I do not remember what the problem turned out to be in those cases. Does anyone have a link to any of those threads?

Hmmm...

When you apply power to it, does a logo of any form appear as it is booting? Anything at all visible on the main display before the pulsing blue standby LED?

It might be possible that the VFD is broken or a fuse to the display board is bad.

But you should still be getting something out of the serial port....

All i get is the blinking blue LED, and the link LED in the back.
Nothing else.

Is it still intermittent? Will it ever come on, as you indicated before in this thread? It might be that the physical connection for the display is loose on the mainboard. Rare, but it can happen.

Also, do you notice a multisecond pause between applying power and the standly LED pulsing? That multisecond pause would be caused by the player going into the boot cycle - the standby LED is not on during that period. If so, that might indicate that the player is booting.

Lastly, please triple check (I know...) your serial configurations. The type of error / failure that I know would cause no output on the serial port is so catastrophic that you would not be seeing any good LEDs at that point.

Hrmm this thing is screwy.
Ok i read on the hyperterminal faq to try pressing CTRL+T then add power. So i did that and this time info showed up in hyperterminal, but i will still stuck in standby.

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...
0000 empeg-car (issue9) board test version 0.05 <[email protected]>
0100 ram test starting
0110 testing ic 1 (0-15mb, low word)
0120 testing ic 2 (0-15mb, high word)
0101 memory error at (data abort vector)

Thats what showed up the first time, so i held ctrl+t again and took the power out and put it back in and the empeg came on fine.

ANyone know why its so screwy? im afraid to turn it back off.

Ugly. Bad memory.

The ctrl-T is the self test for the player. The fact that you got hyperterminal working with it is a good sign. Please try to capture anything you can from a standard boot.

The fact that the ctrl-T showed bad memory is a hardware failure that would require professional servicing. You might want to retry, but it is now very suspicious...

This is what i got the second time. I haven't turned the empeg off since then.

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg52-hijack-v347 (root@ibbm) (gcc version 2.95
.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Sun Nov 23 12:29:03 EST 2003
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15016k/16M available (980k code, 20k reserved, 364k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhas
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 206f6972 'rio '
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel but
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005a80).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: FUJITSU MHM2100AT, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: FUJITSU MHM2100AT, 9590MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=19485/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:22:06:6
a
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initHijack: intercepting config.ini

hijack: removed menu entry: "Serial Port Assignment"
khttpd: listening on port 80
kftpd: listening on port 21
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Mar 26 2003
Vcb: 0x4086d000

Greetings!

That boot log looks fine. At this stage, I think you might have a bad VFD or a bad fuse on the main board going to the display board. If you have any of the remote access software loaded on your PC (Empeg Face for example, and I think emplode will also let you play tracks), you might be able to remotely control the player through the serial port.

Can you find the player with emplode?

Do you have the audio outputs hooked up to an amp or speakers? This will verify the audio circuitry.

Yea the player is hooked up to speakers

At this moment the empeg is up and running fine, i haven't tried turning it on and off again.

Since its up and running wouldn't that cancel out the bad fuse or bad display idea?

You are getting output on the display now?!?!?!

Okay...

Then I would have to go for an intermittent failure of some kind. Possibly memory. Possibly display. It might be a good idea (if you are comfortable opening the player) just to check the connections of the display to the motherboard, just to make certain they are firm.

Yea i opened it up, its open now


I checked the connections they seem fine. Any other ideas?
Think its safe to try turning off?

You will have to eventually. I would try running another self test, see if you have any other problems.

I performed a second self test this is what showed up this time.

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...
0000 empeg-car (issue9) board test version 0.05 <[email protected]>
0100 ram test starting
0110 testing ic 1 (0-15mb, low word)
0120 testing ic 2 (0-15mb, high word)
01f0 ram test done
0200 ide detect
0210 command issued
0220 drive id FUJITSU MHM2100AT
02f0 ide ok
0300 dsp/i2c test
03f0 dsp/i2c ok
0400 temperature detect
0410 temperature is 35
04f0 temperature ok
0500 usb detect
0510 usb rev 1012
05f0 usb ok
0600 ethernet detect
0610 ethernet rev 334b
06f0 ethernet ok
0700 cs4231 detect
0710 cs4231 rev a0
07f0 cs4231 ok
00f0 tests complete

Okay... If it is working, don't argue.

The fact that you did get an error on the RAM self test that time makes me think that your memory might be going bad. Just watch, see if it happens again. Especially if it seems sensitive to temperature (dry solder connection - although this would be a first on the RAM itself) or other external factors.

If the ram ever did go bad, is there anyway to get it fixed?

You would have to find someone with the ability and the spare parts to fix it. The support services from Rob S. should be back in operation in 2004. Also, Eutronix (check the S/PDIF link in the header) can do a lot of the repairs.

Yes, it can be fixed, as can just about anything and everything else about the player. I can replace bad ram, so can Stu (one would imagine), and so can RobS if/when ever he gets set up again. Probably others lurking on the BBS are capable of this as well.

Cheers

Mlord, how much do you charge?

ha, i cut it back off again
and tried to start it back up and the same problem happened.


SO i ran the self test again this is what it shows

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...
0000 empeg-car (issue9) board test version 0.05 <[email protected]>
0100 ram test starting
0110 testing ic 1 (0-15mb, low word)

Took me a few tries to even get the self test to work.

Having trouble getting it to run again.