Help me please!!! My empeg isn't very well. I put it into the car and got the "Hard disk not found - contact support" error message.

So I bought it into the house and tried plugging it into the power cable and nothing appeared on the screen and the drives didn't spin up

And now it's making a ticking noise and the LED is flashing quickly in time with the ticking.

I've got it apart in front of me and have removed the hard drives to ensure it's not them ticking and it still ticks without them connected.

HELP!!!!

Any ideas what could be wrong with it? I hope it's nothing terminal!!

You have a power supply short somewhere. The clicking noise is probably the polyfuse blowing and resetting. Check you don't have any small metal objects lurking around on the pcb (screws, metal filings, crowbars, etc). Remove the power supply jumpers labelled +3V (one jumper) and +5v (two jumpers) and try again. If you don't get the noise, the short is in the main circuitry. If you DO get the noise, the power supply probably has a fault.

If it's not a loose bit of conductive crap, you may have a fairly serious problem

pca

Thanks

Do I remove the jumpers and apply power, or remove the jumpers, wait a bit, put the jumpers back and apply power?

And I'm not sure which jumpers you mean. I have the following:

1 x 3v (blue jumper)
2 x 6v (blue jumpers)
1 x 10v (red jumper)
1 x 5v (red jumper)

Remove the jumpers and then apply power with them still out.

Which ones?

Right I had a play with the jumpers.

With all the blue ones removed (they are the ones nearest the power socket) I get no clicking and no flashing LED

With the 2 x 6v jumpers in place but the one 3v jumper removed, I get the clicking but the blue USB LED on the rear flashes rather than the blue LED on the front.

With the single 3v jumper in place but the 2 6v jumpers removed I get the clicking but no LED's flashing.

So which part of my empeg is termally ill, and is it dead forever, or will it be able to rise again?

What I would suggest is disconnecting your disks completely and repeating the exercise. I have once seen a drive with a seized motor that drew a lot of current and caused this "blow/reset" cycle you are seeing.

The above test was done with the drives removed

If indeed this is termainal, is there anyone in the UK or Europe actually doing repairs these days?

Hi.

OK, this could be bad. It sounds like your power supply may be ok, but there is a short on both the main 3v and 5v (not 6v, the silk screen can be a little unclear) rails on the board, on the other side of the jumpers. Do you have a multimeter? If so, measure the voltage between each of the inner pins of the 3v and 5v headers with the jumpers removed and the power on, and ground (middle screw in the PCB is as good as anywhere). By inner pins I mean the pin each pair nearest the power supply chip (max1631). The voltage should be 3 and 5 volts respectively, to a couple of percent. Then, turn the power off, wait a minute or so, and measure the resistance between the other pin of each pair and ground. This should be quite high, on the order of several hundred to several thousand ohms.

If you find, as I suspect, that you have the correct voltage on the psu, but nearly zero ohms to ground on both power rails, you have a short linking both internal power planes to the ground plane. Normally this is caused by a foreign object somewhere, perhaps under the pcb.

pca

Thanks

I have a multimeter, but I'm no expert in weilding it. I'll have a crack though.

If there isn't a foreign object under the PCB am I looking at an unrepairable empeg or is there still hope?

A quick question - could having mismatched speakers or a short in the speakers somewhere cause damage to the unit (just want to make sure I haven't done something daft with my car!)

A quick question - could having mismatched speakers or a short in the speakers somewhere cause damage to the unit

No.

Your empeg is not driving your speakers. It is feeding a line-level signal to your amplifer(s), and the amplifiers will take the brunt of any wiring errors connected with the speakers.

tanstaafl.

Right, I've weilded my multimeter

Voltage on either of 5V pins = about 4.56V
Voltage on the 3V pin = 0.58V (but about 3V on the outer pin)

Resistance between all 3 >1000 ohms

So what's the diagnosis?

EDIT: On close inspection of the MAX1631 chip I can see this:



Close-up


Could it be causing a problem or not? It looks like it's just a bit of solder so I would have thought if it was going to cause a problem it would have done so years ago? And how best to remove it if you think it could be causing a problem? And could it have done some permanent damage?

What pin numbers are they?

I'm not sure - how do I tell? Here is the full chip if it's any help:

Doesn't that little circle on the top of the chip indicate pin 1?

If so, then the pins in question are 5 and 6.

They are supposed to be connected together.

Stu

Have you removed the main board to see if there is anything loose in there yet? This is always the starting point.

Not yet.

I assume I just need to undo all the screws and lift it out?

I would not worry about pin offsets when you are dismantling: what I am talking about is pulling the board to get a look inside the case and under the main board to look at whether there is anything shorting out tracks.

I would suggest doing this and powering up the board with no display or drives connected to reduce the scope of the problem. With a bare main board, pull the jumpers, measure the 4 voltage rails again, and then reconnect them to see what it does. At the moment, the shutdown circuitry on the PSU seems to be working OK and it's protecting itself, so you should be OK.

Ok, I've just dismantled it all and there was no sign of bodies - foreign or otherwise under the mainboard.

With a bare mainboard and jumpers pulled I get the same results as before when testing for voltage and resistance.

Voltage on either of 5V pins = about 4.56V
Voltage on the 3V pin = 0.58V (but about 3V on the outer pin)

Resistance between all 3 >1000 ohms
Does it look like I'm going to have to book a holiday in Amersfoort?

I had a major problem w/ my empeg, completely messed up the display connector from the MB to the display (pins gone, pads removed from the MB -bad-). A fella with the name of "farmtech" on here was able to give life back to my player, it was amazing. Took quite a bit of work, did a custom hardwired display cable from other pads on the mb, etc etc. It looks like he hasn't been on here in a while, but let him know I sent you. He has about 15 years of history as an electrical hobbiest. He didn't overcharge me or anything. If you aren't able to get ahold of him via here, PM me and i'll give you his e-mail address.

good luck

I think we had a crack at that didn't we? I believe we decided we didn't have enough time to mess with it.

Lately we have quite a bit of time, so you can contact me through the Eutronix link above if you are interested. We do a lot of the repairs in the US.

Stu

Thaks guys, although as I am in the UK it might be easier to get it fixed closer to home if possible.

That's right you did say that. Maybe Rob can help you then. I don't know what his backlog is like though.

Stu

Have you checked all the surface mount quick blow fuses?
I had the same type of problem and this was it.

How do I check them? What do they look like and how do I know if they are blown?

BTW:

In Antwort auf:
Does it look like I'm going to have to book a holiday in Amersfoort?

No need for that, RobS lives in Cambridge now...

see here
http://www.mrmunsell.com/EMPEG/Fuse_Replacement/fuse_replacement.html

Also in the pic that say it most likely to be this fuse, also check the cont on the fuse located in-line with the lower pins 3 and 4.

Thanks.

You know you are bidding against yourself here though - If I fix it, I won't need to buy the one on ebay

EDIT: Oooh, you are in luck. Those instructions are far more than my ham-fistedness can muster. I was hoping it would be as easy as changing a fuse in my car

I will test the fuses though before sending the board off for repair (I must get round to doing that!) so that if one has blown I can point Rob in the right direction to fix it.