Broken from the factory?

I recieved a 20Gb Mk2a that I intended on giving to my girlfriend and when I plugged it in to the wall outlet, it just gets hung up on the RIO logo and never completes boot up. Did anyone else have this problem, and if so what is the fix for it? Is there something that can be done by me or does it have to go back to customer support in UK to be repaired?

Dave

It's probably a loose hard drive cable inside the player. Contact support via the methods in the back of your player manual, they will help you find a solution on the problem.

Do a quick search on "Drive-cable." This has happened to a lot of people (including me) and it is most likely a bad drive cable. The empeg team is aware of it (or more accurately became aware of it once all the players were sold in a few weeks and this started popping up.)

It is a simple fix if you are familiar with opening up a home computer. But don't do anything until you contact support. Opening the player without permission from support will void your warranty. Just send them a note with all of your info (and Serial Number). You will get a personal email back from them, usually in the same day.

NOTE: Remember that the drive cable is hot-glued to the hard drive. The glue has to be removed before you can pull the cable.

There is also a temporary fix.... Basically, what has happened is that the drive cable has three connectors on it - one for each drive (60gb players have two drives) and one to connect to the player's circuit board. There is a connector at each end of the cable, and the third one is in the middle. One of the "end ones" connects to the circuit board. The "middle one" connects to the first drive. It is this "middle" connector (crimped on) that is causing the problems. To fix this, I simply used the connector that is originally intended for the 2nd hard drive to connect to my first drive. (I also moved the hard disk over so the cable would reach).

Again, don't attempt any of this without support's consent. I had opened my player many times to install or swap drives, so I was comfortable. You may want to check out Tony's drive upgrade tutorial at RioOrg.com to familiarize yourself with the inside of the player.

You could always send your player into support too. They are independant within SonicBlue and really do a great job.

Damn, I got too wordy and was beat to it!

This is an item in the FAQ.

Thanks for the info.

Dave

What are the chances that the HD is actually bad? I emailed tech support, David said that I had two options, replace the cable myself or send in the unit. Well theyre out of cables. In the meanwhile I tried flipping around the cable to see if that would alleviate the problem. Still nothing... I know that the ide cable maybe poorly crimped, the hd still spins up, but that only means that it's getting power. Sorry, Im just whining right now.
-Roid

I too got a bad unit and got the ok to open the unit.

Don't "flip" the cable, connect the end plug to the hard drive instead of the middle plug. It is a tight fit, but it will work, just be careful not to bend anything..

-Duh I just read the smae in the FAQ.. Oh to get the glue off I use a flathead screwdriver and gently chiseled away at a perpendical angle to the length of the glue - came off like a charm!

For me that go the unit operational. If you tried to flash the unit before this you will have to do it again I believe.

John M

Instead of making the cable look like a pretzel, I moved the drive over to the "expansion" slot where the end connector is meant to hook up at... It is just 4 little screws....

Oh, the new Rio Cars have washers now to hold the screws in place and help with "drive squeezing" I noticed..