It was one of those instants you regret for a long time.

I was swapping the player over from left to right hand, getting out of the car and preparing to get my front door keys. In a moment the player had slipped from my grasp. My foot nearly caught it, but it landed on the driveway nonetheless. Fortunately, on inspection, I could only see a tiny bit on the back side of the corner of the front panel that was chipped - no scratches, no dents, everything seemed to be in working order.

Until, that is, I put it back in the car.

Now, I can hear it boot up - the hard drive spins and clicks - but then the player remains mute and inert. The only thing that works is that I can hold down the top button to put it into and take it out of standby mode - everything else does nothing.

When plugged into home power it behaves exactly as above, but I can synchronise to it and read from its database. I've posted this, and a copy of the serial line output on boot, to [email protected], but if anyone can tell me what's wrong and what I have to do to fix it I'd be eternally grateful. If it turns out just to be a cable that's popped off then I'd be ecstatic, but all the signs tell me something has gone dramatically wrong with the display board...

adTHANKSvance,

Paul

P.S. my .sig needs to be updated :-(