I don't think Tony or anyone else is defending SonicBlues customer service. Instead, he is trying to tell you that despite what has happened, you can take some comfort in the fact that David is in no way connected with it and has an excellent track record for taking care of customers.

SonicBlue is just the company I bought my 2nd player from. I couldn't care less about them as a whole. But the division that is comprised of former empeg employees gets my full respect. Yeah, I'm pissed that my 2nd player was shipped in a huge box with about 10 styrofoam peanuts in it (would have been better to just ship it in the original box) and was knocked around. But the empeg guys have nothing to do with that.

Many of us longer standing members have followed the product development and know that the empeg company was bought by Sonicblue. The original team handles everything related to the player except for the actual sale and I'm very confidant in them. We aren't providing excuses - just diferentiating between the empeg guys and the rest of SonicBlue and hoping you find some comfort in it. With luck, the integrity of the empeg staff will rub off on the rest of SB.

Ok well I'm a little more complacent now, I ripped off that hot glue and took a pair of plyers and really cranked down on the connectors and it's transferred about 4 gigs fine now. A far cry from the 50 gigs I have to transfer, but it's progress If it tolds out till I get my cable I'll be happy. If it wasn't for the shortness of the cable, I would buy a replacement somewhere around here. I just don't think I could find a feasible/quality replacement easily.

if you do try and buy one, make sure it's a IDE cable for laptops, not a standard IDE cable...

really? damn, I've been cutting this DMA100 desktop IDE cable down to size for the last day or so for nothing? MAN, this SUCKS! j/k.... thanks for the advice

The problem with cables running out is that they are custom made, and there is a long lead time on them (about 3 weeks, if I remember rightly). We ran out of spares when there was the price drop, and again ran out of spares when we had to ship a large number in one go to carplayer.com to cover units they had bought.

We do try and stay ahead of demand, though. The next lot are due any day now.

Hugo

Tell you what, email me your details and I'll arrange a refund.

Rob

Did he return his "worthless piece of metal" for a refund?

Actually he said it was an expensive piece of metal. He's right as well - the parts cost a hell of a lot more than $199.

Rob

oops, I did misquote him.

"He's right as well - the parts cost a hell of a lot more than $199."

Not to mention the labor, rent, and other costs that went into it.

I apologize if I offended anyone, I'm just very anxious/frustrated with the unit right now. I _really_ am looking forward to using it, and I've been able to temporarily use it (half disassembled) at my desk after I crimped the cable connectors down harder. But I know that it's just a temporary fix. At the same time, the remote control doesn't work, so I'm going to go get a new battery in hopes that it will fix it (according to the FAQ and posts, this probably will do it). Until the unit functions as an mp3 player in my car and in my house, it is not doing what it was designed to do. Hence my comment about it being an expensive piece of metal. I'm also hoping beyond hope that the cable will hold out through this weekend. I'm going on a 2 hour trip to the beach and it would be the perfect time to use it. We'll see.

I understand your frustration. When I got mine, I had to ship it back because it had bad ram and rebooted continuously as soon as it warmed up. Theres nothing like paying all that money and then having to ship it back for repair. The turnaround time was short, and after a few days, I had my player back in working condition. Then on top of that, I had to wait a few more months to have enough money to buy an amp and have it installed in my truck. (I had been carefully saving money for the previous year and a half to have enough to buy one and found I didnt have enough leftover for a decent amp and install.) All the units were inspected and tested at the factory at the time of manufacture. They werent selling too well and most of the units sat in the warehouse for a year before the blowout. They were probably banged up pretty good during shipment and mishandled by the incompetent SB warehouse employees as well. I dont think they knew the extent of the bad hard drive cable problems since there werent many units being sold. If you havent loaded up much music, you could disconnect the other drive and just use one drive and the good connector on the cable temporarily.

Sean

I faced exactly the same 'hang on boot up' problem today. My log from hyperterminal looks the same so I guess there is no use posting it. However, unlike Amthar, I have been using the player for about 2 weeks already with no problems except for today's

I recently upgraded to 1.3 and did a couple of syncs with it no problem. I dont' know if this is worth mentioning, but today I had 2 other errors during sync before the player simply froze. First, while synching emplode gave me an error message about something going wrong during STAGE 10 or the sync process. I rebooted emplode and the player and everying seemed back to normal with the songs successfully transferred. On the next sync, again, I received an error about something going wrong during STAGE 5 of the sync. The next thing I know the player just hangs at boot up and does not want to start. I tried upgrading with firmware and that's when I got the 'BADPUMP' error.

I read the 2 FAQ entries related to this issue, as well as this thread, and it looks like it can be narrowed down to either a loose cable OR a bad hard drive. I read in other posts as well as this one that the loose cable problems usually occur only within a few hours of getting the player (because it was banged around during shipping). But my unit worked fine for two weeks, as well as today just before I took it home (btw, in a pelican case). So, it it hard for me to imagine that the cable came loose just in that short period of time, what do you think, could that be the cause of it?

Also, you said that in case the unit has two drives (like mine) one could be taken out so that the connector could be used with the first drive. In this case, how do I know which drive to take out, and which one stores my music (approx only 2 gigs now)? Thanks.

Well, I'd say that I wouldn't rule out a bad cable because it's been working for two weeks - the bad crimp can show up sooner or later...

Some people have reported (at least temporary) success in squeezing the connector with pliers, assisting the failed crimp... This might be the first thing to try, as it's easy and might hold you over until you get a new cable from the empeg guys.

Also, you said that in case the unit has two drives (like mine) one could be taken out so that the connector could be used with the first drive. In this case, how do I know which drive to take out, and which one stores my music (approx only 2 gigs now)?

The bad crimp seems to be limited to the middle connector, which in the empeg connects to the first drive (the one on the right if you look from infront of the empeg) which also normally is the master drive.

The music, when uploaded, is stored on whatever drive that happens to have most free space at the time, so for a player with two likesized drives the music will be spread over both drives.

You can copy any music from the master drive to the secondary with a command like the this:

rwm
cp -ax /drive0/fids/* /drive1/fids
rom

(also check out the Drive Upgrade FAQ, Step 7, as this is a thing sometimes needed to be undertaken in a drive upgrade).

In this case you could also copy the files in /drive0/var/ to /drive1/var/
with

rwm
cp /drive0/var/* /drive1/var/
rom

to copy the database etc (if you don't, when you start the player with only one drive, it'll take a minute or two to rebuild the database - and will do so every time until you sync with emplode.

Note: you'll also need to remove the jumper that designates the left drive as slave.
You can instead place it on the right drive, and it'll turn up as the slave drive when you later reconnect it with a good cable.

Also, be aware of the hot melt glue that is applied to the IDE connector (at the underside as the sit in the cradle. Remove the glue with a scewdriver or similar before trying to remove the IDE cable connector.



/Michael