Well, i'm off to get a kiteboarding session in if the thermals end up kicking in for the evening... so i'll try a kernal reflash and update when i get back. Thanks for your help!!!

Reflashed kernal to latest hijack... same thing. Bad RAM???

edit: ahhh dammit. i just noticed this in the boot log:
Could not find CS4231A (version=80)

sonofa. Same problem mvigneau had? Was that ever resolved? The thread on it just sorta ends.

Yes, he describes the long sordid tale here.

Argh. Thanks for that link... but seems like i'm up a creek. If i read that right, it was an ethernet chip failure of somesort... but i'm not seeing any ethernet problems. Mark (nudge nudge) any ideas?

Question: other than the unit getting hot, do you notice any problems playing music back? Any other symptoms?

Send me your board (just the mainboard, nothing else), Loren, and I'll hack away at it. It could really be just about anything on the peripheral bus that gives that behaviour. I can probably isolate the fault with some effort, but note that I don't have the right equipment/skill to replace the quad flat packs here -- if it comes to that, you'll need to farm it out elsewhere (or perhaps it will motivate me to get a hot air station for such jobs..).

Cheers

Any other symptoms?

It is fidgety... by which i mean it will sometimes stutter when coming back from a pause or take a long time to start playing after a pause, but those are symptoms of it having to read from disk more than anything. Other than that it just runs hot. Everything else seems to function fine.

Mark, is there anything i can look for or trace with a multimeter myself before i ship the mainboard off? I'm reasonably competant around components. Is there any way to check via software how much RAM it's able to use after bootup to determine if it is indeed a bad chip?

Looks like i'll be testing the MkIIa board swap out of necessity! =]

Sorry to hear about the problems with your MK2. I know this isn't going to solve your problem, but it won't hurt your empeg any more than it already is.

I completely remove all comments fields from my ID3 tags in emplode. The comments field uses RAM on the player, so what better way to free up our precious memory then to remove all comments tagged in mp3's

I hope the lord will be able to fix your empeg, it’s really painful when we read about hurting empegs

'cause i use the comments extensively to list artist's labels. In fact that was one of the main reasons for my mass retagging. =]

I'd leave those fields off the empeg, leave them on your PC, but it’s really isn't necessary to track that in the empeg database.

Whenever I need to lookup the detailed stats on an album, I query CD Universe

or maybe, remove the comments from all the tracks, and put the record label in the playlist ID3 tag, that way you only have it once in memory, and not multiple times for each track in the playlist?

Either way, with 12mb of memory, and a 70gb drive of MP3’s. It’s going to run into memory problems I’d think. I remember the empeg guys saying they didn’t use anything over a 30gb drive in their personal empegs.

Are the visuals working -- in particular the various spectrometer ones ?

The cs4231a chip is required to make those work from tuner/aux, but not from mp3 playback. Can you try tuner/aux?

Since the hard drive is working, we know it's not a simple stuck data line like the previous bad player I diagnosed. And you say ethernet is working, so that's good. How about USB?

If USB is good, and tuner/aux visuals don't work (the bar graphs and spectro ones), then the cs4231a *really* is bad, so no need to send me the board.

Cheers

Okay lets get this back on topic can you stick a Mk2a board in a mk2 case

reason the mk2 case is a nicer grade of stainless and i want to polish it.

K, Mark, i tested the visuals and they definitely work fine with the tuner... so looks like the chip isn't bad after all. argh.

Gotta try out USB.

You can. I built half a dozen hybrid Mk2/Mk2a units which were Mk2a metalwork with Mk2 boards in them, so you should be able to do it the other way around.

Remember to be careful when removing the display and mainboards - I'm fairly sure there's videos of me doing it in the FAQ.

Remember to be careful when removing the display and mainboards - I'm fairly sure there's videos of me doing it in the FAQ.

Yup, in both the drive upgrade guide and here.

Sweet, thanks for the confirmation. Now that i think about it... i have one of those hybrids in my closet that Rob sold me a ways back for Kelly. Totally forgot about that.

Guess i'll go ahead and do the swap until i can figure out this "bad chip" error.

Digging up this thread. Finally remembered to take the 2 minutes it took to check USB on this MKII and it it working fine. Any other diagnostics advice on this "bad chip"? I want to get this one working well again before i do a case swap. It is continually overheating due to the drives being spun up all the time.

--maybe i should start a new thread...

So, as a conclusion to this thread and the other I started here about my drives never spinning down... yesterday I did the swap. I put my MkIIa board and display in the MkII case and visa versa. Why you ask? Because I hate the feel of the MkIIa metal, and because it is slightly larger than the MkII case and won't fit in my car sled because the side tabs can't be bent out due to being blocked by mounting brackets. It also works out nicely that I can now use my smoke buttons (thanks Paul!!).

Result: Awesome. I now have about 7GB free on my 80GB and the drives spin down just fine! I must've had a bad RAM chip on the MkII after all, or I guess 4 more MB really does make a difference. I still plan on adding the fan controller and fan, and probably more RAM once it's usable by the player.

Here's some disassembly porn:

I tried to do this a few weeks ago and found that the MkIIa motherboard screwholes didn't quote line up with the MkII threads. Not much, but enough that I'd have had to enlarge the holes on the MkIIa motherboard, which I didn't want to do. Did you encounter that problem?

Hmm... Nope. One of the screws took a little bit of effort, but they all went in without having to enlarge the holes on the board. I was scared of that too, but it seemed to work fine. You probably did it this way, but if not, try only slightly threading each screw so the board is loose and you'll have some room to wiggle before you tighten them down. Oh, and don't swap the screws, use the MkII screws on the MkII case. etc...

Is that a tech support sphere I see hiding in that little white box? Nice photo.

hahah... nice eye. I was wondering if anyone would catch it.