I posted this problem before but it got mixed up in another thread about swapping boards between a MkII and a MkIIa, so let me start anew and summarize:

Victim: MkII empeg with 2 40 GB drives running v2.0Final and Hijack v383 with about 16.4GB free space

Problem: The drives stay spun up ALL THE TIME according to the drive activity icon... which in turn leads to overheating after about an hour or so use in car.

For a previous run down, check out this thread... but here's were i stand now.

Here's a screen grab of the icon that's always up (when it's not showing the W or reading icon) which is described in the FAQ as "Smaller icon with solid gray in center":


Boot log is as follows:

empeg-car bootstrap v1.00 20000601 ([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 kernel.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg52-hijack-v383 (root@ibbm) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Fri
Apr 16 11:15:10 EDT 2004
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 7, serial number 90000896)
Command line: mem=12m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 10960k/12M available (980k code, 20k reserved, 324k 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 bhash 16384)
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 67706d65 'empg'
Found custom animation at offset 0x9877c
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
Scheduling custom logo.
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 button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005080).
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...
hdb: IC25N040ATCS04-0, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IC25N040ATCS04-0, ATA DISK drive
hda: IC25N040ATCS04-0, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IC25N040ATCS04-0, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: IC25N040ATCS04-0, 38154MB w/1768kB Cache, CHS=4864/255/63
hdb: IC25N040ATCS04-0, 38154MB w/1768kB Cache, CHS=4864/255/63
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:d7:12:03:80
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Timezone: /usr/share/zoneinfo
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 initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
Starting player
Timezone: /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Pacific
Hijack: intercepting config.ini

hijack: removed menu entry: "Hard Disk Detection"
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: 0x4058a000
spindown_chunk_cache_runner.cpp: 294:Filling up space (-18)
spindown_chunk_cache_runner.cpp: 294:Filling up space (-18)
spindown_chunk_cache_runner.cpp: 294:Filling up space (-18)

and that repeats at about one line a second... forever.
Last time I investigated this, i was getting an error:

Could not find CS4231A (version=80)

in the boot log, but that seems to have disappeared.

Here's a RAM check:

0000 empeg-car board test version 0.04 <[email protected]>
0100 ram test starting
0110 testing ic 1 (0-3mb, low word)
0120 testing ic 2 (0-3mb, high word)
0130 testing ic 3 (4-7mb, low word)
0140 testing ic 4 (4-7mb, high word)
0150 testing ic 19 (8-11mb, low word)
0160 testing ic 32 (8-11mb, high word)
01f0 ram test done
0200 ide detect
0210 command issued
0220 drive id IC25N040ATCS04-0
02f0 ide ok
0300 dsp/i2c test
03f0 dsp/i2c ok
0400 temperature detect
0410 temperature is 38
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


And here's my config.ini:

[hijack]
khttpd_root_index=/drive0/opt/khttpd/charcoalgray99/index.html
[output]
notify=1
[hush]
hushpercent=20
[display]
play_count=1
visual_names=1
caching=1
[volumecap]
enabled=0
[kenwood]
disabled=0
[ramp]
disabled=0
[menu]
quit=0
sort_playlist=0
[tuner]
region=us
[controls]
stalk_side=none
[Options]
Name=emp3g
[User Info]
Email=loren@******.com
Phone=415-***-****
Name=Loren Cox
[Network]
;@HOME DHCP=0
;@WORK DHCP=1
Gateway=192.168.1.1
Netmask=255.255.255.0
IPAddress=192.168.1.20
DHCP=0
[sense]
muteaction=1
mute=1
[power]
off_timeout=60000
[aux]
source=
title=
artist=
[synchronise]
seq_num=89
[wendy]
flag_amount=0
[custom]
wendy=
[searches]
amount=0
[VisualFavourites_AM]
count=0
[VisualFavourites_AUX]
count=0
[VisualFavourites_DSP]
count=0
[VisualFavourites_FM]
count=0
[shuffle]
deduplicate=0


I've reinstalled the firmware and hijack to no avail... as well as rebuilt the database by hand.

I'm stumped fellas... any ideas?

-r--r-- 1 0 0 3.0M Sep 22 11:12 database

Doesn't look too insane... does it?

As for tracks... um.. 17367 according to a down down down. But even when i'm playing one 12 track album, it's still always spun up. Paul reports having no such problems on his empeg with over 100gb of music... but i think that's on a MkIIa... maybe that extra 4 megs makes that much difference? I've got some RAM chips... maybe i'll have a go at adding RAM after all.

Hrm... I think i'm going to do a board swap and see how much that extra built in RAM helps before i go messing up my board with my mediocre soldering skills. Maybe I'll crack it open this week and see if i think i can do the solder job myself or not. . .

Any Bay Area folks done the RAM upgrade that would attempt the work?

Thanks Peter.

Before you try to mess with the memory upgrade, you might want to wait until Patrick comes up with a new memory upgrade kit that is less messy than the stacking method, unless you want to put your extra RAM chips to a good use.

It's actually a cost issue. Can't afford the $200 for a neat solution. Esp. when i have some chips sitting here doing nothing. I'm sure it'll be way easier and neater... but i haven't that much free flowing cash at the moment just to make sure my drives spin down. I guess a board swap between my MkII and MkIIa backup is in order as a first step...

Greetings!

Even with the 16MB, my drives did not spin down much either. I just never noticed it before.

Personally I think this whole drive spinning down thing is a myth. I've only got about 8000 songs on a mk2a and my drives rarely manage to spin down. Of course I'm running v3a7 and ext3 neither of which are likely to help the situation.

-Mike

Wait for Patrick's board.

There's nothing wrong with the two-chip solution --> 32MB (Mk2a). By far the best bang for one's buck, that way!

But if this is your Mk2 player, then.. yup, it really wants Patricks new board. If you can wait until 2005, that is.

Cheers

I've only got about 8000 songs on a mk2a and my drives rarely manage to spin down

I've got about 10,000 "songs" (includes audiobooks and a lot of classical music) and my drives are rarely spun up.

However, upon reflection... I spend quite a bit of time listening to audiobooks, many of which are recorded at 64 kbps which means that I can stuff a lot of minutes of audio into not a lot of cache.

tanstaafl.

Not anymore (that I know of)...