Ack! Noooo!!!!

Posted by: SonicSnoop

Ack! Noooo!!!! - 02/08/2004 23:36

I got home from work today and my baby was working fine, it was raining out but I thought I did a good job keeping her covered in my shirt while hunched over running into the house. A lil while later I plugged her in and she booted up fine. left the room for a while and came back and the screen was garbled.

I rebooted her and she never woke back up. All I get is the lil blue blinking led.

no sound nothing. I tried hooking up the serial cable and see if it saw anything but nothing shows up. I cant loose my baby! I have since left her unpluged in hopes if some moisture did get in and caused this that by morning it will have dried out and hopefully hasnt caused any permenate damage but knowing my luck...

Posted by: Shonky

Re: Ack! Noooo!!!! - 03/08/2004 07:31

Water + electronics are generally OK if dried/cleaned properly first.
Water + electronics + electricity can be bad. The fact it initially worked is a good sign at least. The internal self heating would at least have helped dry it out a bit.

I can't imagine it would have gotten too wet under your shirt unless it was a torrential downpour.

No serial boot log at all is quite bad. Definitely got the right cable (null modem) and hyperterminal settings? Remember it boots at 115200 before defaulting to 4800. The FAQ entry doesn't seem to explicitly mention that. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that - let me know if I'm not.

The fact the LED blinks means at least part of the power supply is working. Can you hear the drives spin up?

Posted by: SonicSnoop

Re: Ack! Noooo!!!! - 03/08/2004 07:36

No nothing happened but the led blinking. BUT this morning I plugged it in and it booted right up. everything is working fine. I turned it off tho and left it alone just to give it a lil more time just to be safe. gawd that had me scared.there was nothing in the boot log using the same cable and settings i used before and when i booted it this morning i checked the same terminal i used yesterday and it now has stuff in the log and looks normal. Thanks for the reply tho.

Posted by: Roger

Re: Ack! Noooo!!!! - 03/08/2004 07:46

Quote:
I'm pretty sure I'm right about that - let me know if I'm not.

You're not: at least not totally. On AC (home) power, the serial rate is always 115200 8N1. On DC (car) power, it starts in 115200, but then drops to 4800. You can override this by setting the "car_rate" parameter in config.ini.

Posted by: Shonky

Re: Ack! Noooo!!!! - 03/08/2004 08:47

Quote:
Quote:
I'm pretty sure I'm right about that - let me know if I'm not.

You're not: at least not totally. On AC (home) power, the serial rate is always 115200 8N1. On DC (car) power, it starts in 115200, but then drops to 4800. You can override this by setting the "car_rate" parameter in config.ini.

Fair enough but a bit clearer than the FAQ (sorry Tony) for this situation. The picture shows setting 115200 but doesnt mention it and then says in the text: "If you're trying to connect to the player via the in-car serial connector, you must change the "Bits Per Second" value to 4800. When it's running on DC power, the serial port speed is lowered to 4800 for better compatibility with other in-car hardware devices."

A Mark Lord dock appears to the player to be on "DC Power" for most intents and purposes doesn't it without any special setup?

In either case you want 115200 to catch the important boot info.

Posted by: Roger

Re: Ack! Noooo!!!! - 03/08/2004 09:45

Quote:
A Mark Lord dock appears to the player to be on "DC Power" for most intents and purposes doesn't it without any special setup?

If you've got Hijack installed, it'll detect the Mark Lord dock and tell the player that it's on AC power.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: Ack! Noooo!!!! - 03/08/2004 15:33

Quote:
left the room for a while and came back and the screen was garbled.

You might have a damaged display cable, unrelated to the moisture you were worried about.

Posted by: SonicSnoop

Re: Ack! Noooo!!!! - 03/08/2004 23:09

I dont know if it was just the cable, cause nothing worked the drives wouldnt spin up nothing. hit the buttons on the remote or the player and nothing happened. only thing that worked was the blue led. but its working now so im just thankful and leaving it right where it sits for a while.

Might be a good time to back up my mp3s