I'm driving along to work this morning and the player gets this little "W + drive busy" icon in the corner and stops playing. I let it sit for a little while, but it stays there, not playing. So I pull it out of the sled for a moment, push it back in, and it gets the "Failed to unmask IDE" error message when it boots up. I've never seen that message on this unit before. (It's a Riocar 20GB from the "Fire Sale" last Dec.)

There's no battery icon to indicate low power, I'm cruising along at 65mph on the interstate, so the engine/alternator/whatever should be going full-bore. (And I just had to buy a new battery about three months ago.)

I'll check the wiring when I have a chance to make sure nothing's come loose, and I'm busy rsync'ing off the data partition in case I want to try to run any HD tests on the drive.

But if it were a voltage problem, shouldn't I have seen the battery icon pop up?

Does anyone have any other ideas what could cause this message?

There is more than one possible cause for that error message. A search on the FAQ for the term "unmask" reveals two entries. The second one, which is the more likely scenario for you, is here.

This has happened four or five more times since I posted the first note. If I pull the unit out of the sled and let it sit for a minute or two, then plug it back in, it works ok, and can play the whole track that it hung up on previously.

I have brought it in to work with me and left it plugged into the A/C adapter and playing tracks all day (8+ hours) and it's run flawlessly the whole time. l also ran "badblocks" against the drive and it showed no problems. But I've got about a 50% chance it'll display "drive active icon with a W" and stop being able to access the drive at some point on my drive in to work or home from work.

Could this be a component going flaky that's only in use when it's plugged into car power? I can hear the drive spin up when it does this and I've pulled out/plugged back into the dock in the car, so it doesn't seem like the drive is flaking out, at least in terms of stop functioning.

It's not disastrous as I can just wait a couple minutes and then plug it back in, but it's certainly annoying.

It could be a car power/wiring issue, or a heat/ventilation issue.

Greetings!

One thought. Are you using Hijack? Try running the unit at the office / home with the mode forced to "in car" mode. Maybe there is something hanging it up in software. Or, force it as "at home" while in the car. It would take the software out of the equation...

> It could be a car power/wiring issue, or a heat/ventilation issue.

I thought about that. I've checked the wiring, and at least for the harness, it's all good. I can't say for sure about the rest of the car, but I would think I'd get a battery icon if there were power/voltage problems, wouldn't I?

As far as temperature, I have the hijack kernel on there and have checked the unit's temperature when it's started to flake out and it's not anything unsual from any other time it's running.

I'm going to try the "force car mode" suggestion here at work and see if anything happens - and if that still doesn't do anything, I'm going to try replacing the kernel with the stock "consumer" rather than hijack, although I don't see how that could have any effect.

Interesting reading this.. just 2 days ago I had exactly the same experience: lockup while driving, pull-out-push-in, 'Failed to unmask IDE' message. After having it removed for a few minutes, play flawlessly. Before, it had played for 2-3 weeks in the car without problems.

Reading the suggested possible causes further elsewhere in this tread, I'm still not sure what would have caused it: this unit has never been opened before (backup unit).

If you find out more during your tests, could you post the results in this tread as well?

Jelle

I had this happen once too, about a week ago. Started the car, got the error, pulled the empeg and plugged it back in, everything was then fine. Haven't seen it since...

- Jon

There's no software in that equation. This is almost certainly a heat issue, either producing flakiness in the connectors, or on the drive itself.

I have already had one drive act very flakey due to the high temperatures normally seem in a player (50C is NOT healthly), and swapped it out for a more tolerant drive.

Cheers

50C is within the drive's stated operation range (5 degrees below its maximum); have you felt how hot they get when in real laptops, where they are crammed in with no space for air circulation or cooling?

Connectors/cable could be an issue, though. The cable used in the empegs (and the replacement cables sent out) don't actually have deep enough holes for the length of pins on the drive/main board (so don't push them on too hard); however, the ones used in later rio-cars which *do* have the right depth connectors are so awfully crimped that they have a high failure rate.

Hugo

There's also the possibility that it could be a combination of both: A slightly dodgy cable connection which is exacerbated by thermal cycling.

Greetings!

I thought there may have been something different with the way the player handled home vs. car modes, so I thought forcing the location through hijack might show something. Heat and connector looks to be the case, but...

The 50C measurement is is not the drive, but rather for the surface temperature of the main player circuit board underneath the drive. It is very possible and probable that the drive itself will be 5-10C warmer than the measurement of the circuitry below, exceeding the acceptable working temperature,s and thus producing failures.

There've been more than enough reports of "it works with the cover off" and "fails with the cover on" to substantiate this, though one will never know for sure until we measure the temperature at the drive itself.

Cheers