Okay, I am running 2.0b13 and Hijack. My player has been freezing up on me both in the car and at home for the past two weeks. I have not had any problems to speak of up until then. I had taken the player apart to chaeck the integrity of the HDD cable connections. It seemed to help. I never got a a NO HDD FOUND messege at any time.
But this morning I got into work plugged it in and it started to stutter, screech, and hang. I unplugged it once and then put power to it and it was ok for about 10 minutes. Then it did the same thing. I removed power for about 20 minutes and then tried to apply power again. Now this time when it powered up I got a messege at boot up that ALL SETTINGS ARE LOST. I have never seen this messege before. Could this be a HDD cable or bad drive??? I scanned through the bug report forum and couldn't find anything that contained this messege. Can you help me out. The player should still be under warranty.

"stutter, screech" were these noises it made? If so I would say it's a bad drive.

Yeah, it is making those noises and getting hung up on certain sections of tracks that have played just fine in the past. It will be playing and all of a sudden it will just freeze and keep making the sound from that part of the track but very drawn out.

The "All settings are lost" means that its flash memory has been corrupted. All settings in flash memory just got erased.

Have you done a RAM test on the player?

(Instructions in the FAQ under "Hyperterminal")

Tony,
I just did a test for RAM in Hyperterminal I have pasted the output below:

0000 empeg-car (issue9) board test version 0.05 <[email protected]>
0100 ram test starting
0110 testing ic 1 (0-15mb, low word)
0120 testing ic 2 (0-15mb, high word)
01f0 ram test done
0200 ide detect
0210 command issued
0212 drq=1 but irq=0 (no drive connected?)
0300 dsp/i2c test
03f0 dsp/i2c ok
0400 temperature detect
0410 temperature is 32
04f0 temperature ok
0500 usb detect
0510 usb rev 1012
05f0 usb ok
0600 ethernet detect
0610 ethernet rev 334b
06f0 ethernet ok
0700 cs4231 detect
0710 cs4231 rev a0
07f0 cs4231 ok
00f0 tests complete

And here is the output from hyperterminal for boot up:

0000 empeg-car (issue9) board test version 0.05 <[email protected]>
0100 ram test starting
0110 testing ic 1 (0-15mb, low word)
0120 testing ic 2 (0-15mb, high word)
01f0 ram test done
0200 ide detect
0210 command issued
0212 drq=1 but irq=0 (no drive connected?)
0300 dsp/i2c test
03f0 dsp/i2c ok
0400 temperature detect
0410 temperature is 32
04f0 temperature ok
0500 usb detect
0510 usb rev 1012
05f0 usb ok
0600 ethernet detect
0610 ethernet rev 334b
06f0 ethernet ok
0700 cs4231 detect
0710 cs4231 rev a0
07f0 cs4231 ok
00f0 tests complete

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([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!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux....................................... done, booting the ker
nel.
Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg51-hijack-v285 ([email protected]) (gcc ve
rsion 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Fri Jul 26 11:13:49 EDT 2002
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 10101980)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 14952k/16M available (1040k code, 20k reserved, 368k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004400).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hdb: probing with STATUS(0x50) instead of ALTSTATUS(0xff)
hdb: IBM-DJSA-230, ATA DISK drive
hda: probing with STATUS(0x50) instead of ALTSTATUS(0xff)
hda: IBM-DJSA-230, ATA DISK drive
hdb: probing with STATUS(0x50) instead of ALTSTATUS(0xff)
hdb: IBM-DJSA-230, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: IBM-DJSA-230, 28615MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
hdb: IBM-DJSA-230, 28615MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:22:07:b
c
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comp








þStarting player

hijack: removed menu entry: "Hard Disk Detection"
khttpd: listening on port 80
kftpd: listening on port 21
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00-beta13 2002/07/24.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Jul 24 2002
Vcb: 0x4086d000

Do you notice anything unusual?

It is funny, when I left work I put it in the car and it booted OK. Then about 2 minutes later it squealed and froze up again. then I pulled out the unit and reapplied power. It started to boot but got stuck on the logo screen. Now I am at home and it boos right up. I am very frustrated right now. I was hoping that I could get a hang while booting up so I could captureit in hyperterminal.

Well, it passed the RAM test but it certainly sounds like some kind of hardware problem. I'd contact support.

But if he heard noises coming from the drive itself wouldn't that be a bad drive?

Possibly. The screeching is odd, though. I guess it's conceivable that the screeching could be from a bad drive, just sounds strange to me.

Could the screeching be bad data coming off the knackered drive, upsetting the decoder? I have a couple of mp3s that I've found make some absolutely horrible noises.

Today after my MK2 started to develop problems I decided to swap it's hard drive with the one from my Mk2A that this thread is about. This is what I did and the results:

1.) I have an extra HD cable so I tried to replace the old one and it still wouldn't boot up.

2.) I hooked up the drives from my MK2a on my MK2 and it booted from those drives and then ran it in my car all day and their were no shutdowns or freeze ups like I got when using the MK2A hardware with the same drives. This makes me think the problem does not lie in the hard drives or cables.

3.) I hooked up the 12Gb drive from my Mk2 to my Mk2a and when I powered it up the messege "NO HARD DRIVE FOUND CONTACT SUPPORT" came across the screen. this reinforces my thinking that there is a problem with the hardware not the drives or cables. this is only if the software is compatible from the MK2 to the MK2a.

I can not think of any other tests I can do. at this point except wait for support to contact me.