repair facility in europe

Hi there,

i bought a riocar rd100-10 in november last year. Unfortunately it did not work and due to sonicblues bankruptcy i never got it repaired under warranty. Now i have had this wonderfull piece of high-tech sitting on the shelf for months and i think it's time to get this *I§%&*# thing working.

The systems hangs during the boot process and doesn't startup. At the serial console it shows several ide errors (hda not ready, hda interrupt lost, hda status timeout). I have double and tripple checked everything according to the riocar.org FAQ. The system still 'hangs' whenever (nearly, I had it booting up completly 2 or 3 times) it tries to access the hard drive which happens also during the update process,
error message: "Bad pump response to device select occurred during
stage 0x25".

I have already tried a different harddrive and a new harddrive cable.

Does anybody know a repair facility for riocars?

regards,
Marty

The ``semi-official'' place would be Rob Schofield, but his services are not available right now. Chances are, since you've already replaced the drive and the cable, that the IDE header is not soldered on properly. It was an unfortunately common defect. Please read this FAQ about it.

You ought to be able to get anyone with experience in soldering electronic equipment to reflow the header and that should probably fix your problem.

The solder joints of the connector look quite good (much better than those in the faq) but i'll give it a try. Thanks a lot for your fast reply!

Seems to me it may be wise to have an anoucement explaining the current support situation, since we seem to get this question a lot around here. Tom?

Unfortunately it did not work and due to sonicblues bankruptcy i never got it repaired under warranty.

Too bad you never actually tried making a warranty claim during that year. They were warranty-servicing players even when SonicBlue went under. Now you're SOL because the one-year warranty has expired.

Did you just read about SonicBlue going under and then assume it meant they wouldn't honor the warranty? Too bad...

In any case, the odds are good that you just need to re-crimp the cable as pictured in the FAQ. Not a big deal at all. Make sure to read the Drive Upgrade guide for dismantling instructions or you'll rip apart the connector because you didn't see it was glued from beneath.

Also, once you get the hard disk working, make sure to put the version 2.0 final software on the player and get emplode 2.0 final. Again, software development is something that kept going even though SonicBlue went under. Just because a company goes out of business doesn't necessarily mean the products are left high and dry. At least not in this case.

My link ``not available,'' above, links to just such an announcement.

/me marks that announcement post as "Sticky".

Hi Marty,

If it's a resoldering job for the ide connector, i'd be more than willing to do the job for you. I'm located in Denmark, Europe. It'll only cost you the shipping.

Goes for any one else in europe. Heh, and don't worry - i'm a trained professionel, with all the nesseary equipment to do the job at my company.

\\Kaare

In any case, the odds are good that you just need to re-crimp the cable as pictured in the FAQ

Ummm... he already said...
I have already tried a different harddrive and a new harddrive cable.


so that's probably not the problem.

tanstaafl.

Well, I've just managed to fix my Mk2a. I've had the 'Contact Support' screen more than a few times over the last few months, now that the colder weather is here. Normally when I forgot to bring my Empeg in from the car and booted it from cold 1st thing in the morning.

Tried a new cable and a new drive to no avail, finally got round to having a look at the IDE header and could see a slight imperfection in one or two of the solder joints. Heated them up, flowed a little more solder on to the worst (and just heated the other) and 'Bing!' fixed.

I reckon it's fixed, cos every other time I've taken it to bits it has coughed up that error for about 20 mins of solid cable manipulation, swearing, physical abuse and weeping in the corner until finally starting to boot again. This time it fired straight up and hasn't put a foot wrong since </relief>

My new solder joint may not be the tidiest in the world, but it works

Hi,

it's me again.
I took the unit to an electronics technician and he told me that the solder joints have already been professionally resoldered. Therefore they look very good and nothing needs to be done on them.
So i'm stuck again. The drive is okay, the hd cable and the hd connector also.
Is there anybody in germany or europe who could repair my riocar?

regards
Marty

a friend of mine gave me his empeg to fix which had the same problem ("Bad pump response to device select occurred during stage 0x25".), and after reading this thread and this this FAQ entry, i replaced the IDE cable and it worked!

thanks!