Player not booting

Hi....

My MK2a isn't booting. I connected to terminal server and the machine kept cycling through the prompt to upgrade the flash. I ran logo editor and installed the Hijack kernel. After applying the patch and then connecting to terminal server I get the 'Let the Penguins Fly' message but then it hangs at

(data abort vector)

any suggestions?

-Chris

did you get the happy face at the end of the logoedt kernel installation?

Are you ***** S U R E ***** the kernel .zimage file was correct and was not corrupted? What did you use to download that kernel file?

Also do a RAM test, described in the FAQ about using hyperterminal.

Hi Tony...

I actually did get the smiley face after the kernal upload. I was quite pleased (if only for a VERY short period of time) with myself.

I just used firefox to download the file and have not yet encountered a bad download. I would have performed a CRC check but didn't have any information about the correct checksum. I also did perform the RAM test by pressing CTRL-T during power-up and didn't get any errors during the check.

This happened quite suddenly. The player worked in my car this morning, I brought it in the house to upload some additional songs and the empeg wouldn't boot up when I plugged in the adapter. I didn't drop it.

I also couldn't find any information about the (data abort vector) message instead of telling me that the kernel was loading into memory.

Is there something in particular I could check or is there a way to force the bootup into a more extreme diagnostic mode?

Thanks again!

cycle power, and see if it boots from power-on.

-ml

Just for the heck of it, try downloading the zimage file with IE instead of Firefox.

Also, make sure that it's the correct zimage file for your player, in other words, if you have a Mk2, then make sure the get the Mk2 version of the zimage file. Then try applying agin.

Oh. And try flashing and then booting the player with the hard disks completely removed. See if it boots the kernel then.

The player worked in my car this morning, I brought it in the house to upload some additional songs and the empeg wouldn't boot up when I plugged in the adapter

I'm guessing it no longer boots up in the car as well?

tanstaafl.

Oh yeah, doug's got a point!!! Could just be a bad AC adapter that doesn't have enough power to spin up the disk drives. As the drives spin up, voltage goes down and bam.

I initially did the power off and boot up with no HD attached and got the Abort Vector message. Also, the player doesn't boot up the car either. When I run the self-test (CTRL-T) the drive spins up and everything sounds OK but during a normal boot I hear no drive activity on boot and it looks like the kernel isn't even loading.

I will try to re-download the kernel and re-apply and see what happens there.

Any chance that one of the developers can tell me what that message actually means and/or what the player is trying to do? That might help me narrow down the problem or let me know that I need to send the unit in for repair.

-Thanks

The message means "reflash the kernel".

Excellent.

I will re-download the hijack kernel and try again. Unless there is a different player image I should be using to flash some life back into my player!

-Chris

reflash with the developer image first, then apply the hijack again.

Just use the download program, or Tony's Logo Editor, to reflash only the Hijack kernel. No need to do a full reinstallation yet.

Cheers

Yeah, we want to see if the kernel and flash are working at all before trying to go to the trouble of installing an entire hard disk partition.

Definitely try the kernel flash with no disks installed to see if the flash takes and if the kernel can boot without the disks.

I re-downloaded (several times) this kernel:
v413.hijack.mk2.zImage
and applied it also several times and keep getting the same message
(data abort vector)

What should I try next?

-Chris

This is with the disk drives completely unplugged from the player?

If so, it's time for Stu or Rob to get their hands on it.

I'll try one more time with the drives NOT connected to the board and then I guess I'll have to send it in <GULP>

Thanks for all the help guys!

-Chris

I wonder if you are getting it into kernel download mode or not.. Tony, how can he tell if the thing is successfully downloading a kernel or not?

I'm getting the progress indicators and the smiley face in the logo editor program when I flash the kernel. Also, I still haven't removed the drives and reflashed the kernel. I'll do that after work today.

-c

Quote:
Tony, how can he tell if the thing is successfully downloading a kernel or not?

Smileyface.

I can't imagine a situation where the kernel flash would fail yet still give a smiley face. That smiley face only appears when upload.exe successfully sent every packet and got every proper receipt handshake in return.

Now, that doesn't mean it thinks the kernel file was a good kernel. It never examines the kernel file or does any sort of validation on its contents. You could send it a JPG of Claudia Schiffer and it would still give you the happy face.

Which is why I wanted to make certain he downloaded it with a browser that never inserts CRLFs into the downloaded files. (The Netscape-family browsers when run on the Windows platform sometimes will do that on a binary file if the server's MIME types aren't set right. They're doing the correct thing according to spec, and IE is deliberately breaking spec in that case, but at least it never inserts CRLFs into a binary file.)