Serial Port Problem

Hi,

My MKII player wroks just great and has done for over two years. However, I've had problems with the serial port. About 18 months ago the serial port stopped working, as evidenced by garbage being spewed out to Hyperterm, I sent the unit back to jolly ole England and it was promptly repaired and returned.

Recently, the same problem has re-occurred, thus preventing me from upgrading to 3.0 (yea I'm slow to upgrade brom Beta-13). I have two questions:

1) Now the SonicBlue is dead and gone, who can repair the unit.

2) What could cause the serial port to blow during normal operation and how can I prevent it in future, as a day without my Empeg is like a day without breath.

Any sane suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Well you could get a back up unit as prices are coming down a bit

Keep going with beta as if it is 2.0beta then it should be fine

As to repairs rob S took over but he is out the picture just now due to family probs However there is lots of ver knowledgable folk out on the board ho might be able to fix it.

What could cause the serial port to blow during normal operation and how can I prevent it in future, as a day without my Empeg is like a day without breath.

The most common cause of serial port failure, in my experience, is simply a bad (i.e. frayed) cable. Have you tried replacing it?

Also have a look at this. Maybe you just need to solder the serial port plug to the mainboard a little better.

I had thought of a backup unit, however it does double the music management chores.

Beta-13 is OK, I was thinking of playing with the developers edition, that does require downloading via serial port.

I did read that Rob S was having a "family crisis" and will poll him as soon as he emerges, hpefully for him real soon.

The first thing I tried was to hook up my desktop and laptop and bash away with Hyperterm on both. This proved that the serial cable and ports on both machhines were OK.

I'm a bit ham-fisted with a soldering iron and wouldn't dare to toch my b eloved Empeg with one for fear of really screwing it up. But I may try opening it and try doing some wiggling of parts, the Empegs not mine.

Greetings!

I had thought of a backup unit, however it does double the music management chores.

Actually, if you run the developer version, there is a great way around that. By using rsync, you can keep two or more players perfectly in sync with all tags and playlists with very little effort.

Beta-13 is OK, I was thinking of playing with the developers edition, that does require downloading via serial port.

You certainly want to move to the developer version - either 2.0 final or 3.0 Alpha. I do not know if there are any bugs or problems with the final that work in the beta. (Is this the case with RDS? I seem to remember reading something...)

I did read that Rob S was having a "family crisis" and will poll him as soon as he emerges, hpefully for him real soon.

Actually, I am rather concerned about him, especially after his last post. Has anyone heard anything new from him, or know how he is doing? If so, please reply to that thread. Thanks.

We are all concerned for him just don't want to invade his privacy.

Hi, dunno where you are, but if you're in the US then try Stu at Eutronix for repairs (follow S/PDIF link at top of this post). He seems to be hoarding empeg spares and certainly has the knowledge.

Good luck, Sim

Thanks for the suggestion. I just dropped them a line.

No one asked if you were running hijack. I assume you aren't, but if you are it's possible to upgrade over ethernet. In the long run however you'll want to get the serial port working.

Matthew

As you assumed, I'm running the standard software, although one of the things I wanted to try out was hijack, but alas the serial port woes thwarted that.