Help needed - Mk2 suddenly died.

Hi All,
Hopefully someone can shed some light on my problem. I'd been listening to my Mk2 all day on my desk at work when all of a sudden the screen went blank and the Blue LED started to blink. I tried restarting it several times but it just powered up into what looks like sleep mode. It did manage to go part way through it's normal booting sequence once but then reverted to powering up into sleep mode again.

Now I've got it dismantled and completely removed from it's chassis it's still doing the same thing even with no display board, HDD or anything else connected. Here's the serial output in Hyperterminal:

*************************************
e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux...
empeg-car bootstrap v1.00 20000601 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!
*************************************

This keeps repeating and is the same whether I connect the HDD or not. I've also noticed that the Red SMT LED near the front RHS of the board and the Blue 'Link' LED flash. When the HDD is connected this sounds like it's going through power up/power down cycles in time with the LED flashing.

My guess is that there may be something that has gone short circuit on the mainboard. Does anyone have a better idea of what could be wrong and how I might fix it? I would have contacted Rob (support) but I have'n't heard from him since February about another issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

My guess is that there may be something that has gone short circuit on the mainboard.

That's possible. It also might possibly be disk trouble, database trouble, or simply trying to play a bad track over and over.

If it doesn't display any information about the kernel when coming up, it's almost certainly got nothing to do with database trouble or a bad track. In fact, if it's not getting as far as "Starting player", then it's nothing to do with the database or the music.

It could be a disk problem, but I doubt it -- the kernel comes up from flash, and it hasn't got as far as "Probing primary interface..."

The incessant flashing of LEDs sounds like hardware failure to me.

One thing you could try, though, is reapplying a flash upgrade, if possible.

If it doesn't display any information about the kernel when coming up,

Good point. But sometimes I've seen situations where the hyperterminal settings are wrong (or there's some kind of weird issue with the serial cable) and you only see just that much of the boot log and then nothing, even though the player is sending the rest of the bootup log to the serial port. I was thinking that might be a reason he only saw that much.

Hmmm. Now that you mention it... Another thing it could be... Bad flash. It could be trying to boot the kernel from flash, but the kernel is corrupted. Just for the heck of it, apply just a Hijack upgrade with the serial cable and see if it boots again. (Heck see if it'll even TAKE a hijack upgrade.)

Thanks for your quick replies guys.
I'd already tried re-applying an upgrade (v2.00 final) via Emplode but it sits there doing absolutely nothing. I've since tried applying a Hijack (v332) kernel with the logo editor and it went through the process as normal. Once it had finished it was behaving the same as before. btw the LED flashing frequency is exactly matched by the HDD power-up sound and the cyclic output from the serial port. It really feels like something's drawing too much current and the whole thing is shutting down again - this process continuing ad infinitum till I pull the plug .


I'm fairly confident it's a hardware problem too and I've done all I can to isolate the problem to the mainboard by disconnecting everything else. Initially I was hoping it was just a loose HDD cable. I guess I'll need to send it in for repair (if this is still possible?). Are you still doing the repairs @ empeg towers or is Rob Schofield handling these now?


Thanks again.

It really feels like something's drawing too much current and the whole thing is shutting down again - this process continuing ad infinitum till I pull the plug

Ooo. Ooo. Are you doing all of this with the same power supply? Maybe it's just a bad power supply. Do you have an alternate you can try?

David stopped doing Empeg's support but Rob Schofield is handling it now. Just contact him via [email protected]

Well, strangely it's started working fine now. Hopefully the problem won't come back.

I was using two different Empeg/Rio supplied power supplies and it was doing it in the car too on the way home. Anyway, as I said it's working again now.

Thanks everyone for your help .

You don't happen to have a loose screw, do you?

You don't happen to have a loose screw, do you?

beaker, he's referring to your empeg, btw.

Yeah, I thought that might need clarification, thanks.

Yeah, I think I have got a few loose screws, but not in my Empeg . I'm ok if I keep taking the tablets .

I thought there might be a loose screw or bit of stray solder flying around. That's why I took the whole thing apart and just had the bare mainboard on the bench but I didn't find anything. It could be a dodgy track as it's been back to Empeg a couple of times for work to be done on this part (the power supply) of the board before.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's not going to recurr.