Okay, now I'm scared...

I got my Empeg finally stuck in my Mini (thanks to Robricc for the black sled! It is schweet!) and I slid my baby in. This is the first time it's ever been mounted in the car, and I'm worried. I think all my carrying it around has possibly warn the HD out, or worse..
When the HD icon is on, and has the bright inner-line, after a short period, the player will freeze and stutter as the HD tries to read the track. The icon will stay like that for a long time (untested how long it stays.) If I pause the player, let the HD catch up, and then resume, it's all fine until I advance to the next track or so. I know it's the player (and not, say, my amp cutting out) because the visuals freeze and stutter with the music.
Under ideal circumstances (i.e. I let the HD catch up with itself) the music plays fine, except for one thing. Barely noticable 'dropouts'. Like, milliseconds in length, at random. I still think it's the player, because there's still a tiny 'freeze' of the visualizations.
In AC mode, at work, everything is peachy. It's running right now, no issues.

Do I have a bad HD, or is it dying? Or just really bad at shock prevention? (Granted, I do have a Mini, which has a very stiff suspension, but my OTHER player runs fine in it.)

Me.

Well, it's either a bad drive cable, or far more likely....

.... someone has given you a copy of V3 A3. In which case, I am inclined to use the advanced technical terminology that we software engineers use in this situation:

"Na na ne na nah!!!"

Uh oh...

It sounds like the hard drive or a dry solder joint. Or a flaky cable.

You might want to see if it does the same thing on AC power and open it up to take a look...

It sounds like a flaky drive, but there are lots of other possibilities. Try the easy ones first.
1. Make sure the IDE cable is connected well. (If that's it hot glue it.)
2. If your only running one drive try the second IDE connection.
3. If none of these work then your drive is probably dying and eventually will quit working all together.

I find V3 A3 far better at skipping through tracks without a glitch than any 2.x release. Of course, this could be because I am using an Mk2 and the there is not enough cache for the drives to ever spin-down...

Best way to sort out if it's a flakey drive is to post a serial log of the boot/during operation.

Questions:

Is it a Mk1 or a Mk2?

Do you ever get the little "battery" icon? Read that link, it might explain why it happens only on DC power.

Could also be that the mounting angle in the car has made a drive cable loose.

I find V3 A3 far better at skipping through tracks without a glitch than any 2.x release. Of course, this could be because I am using an Mk2 and the there is not enough cache for the drives to ever spin-down

Agree on that (with a MkIIa). Could it be that the pre-cacheing algorithms changed because of the cross-fader? But OTOH it competely stops playback, and refuses to come back unless rebooted, on some tracks (mainly some audio books I didn't rip myself, but also some other tracks). All buttons are responsive, I can skip tracks, kill artist etc, but it won't resume playing - any track stays forever (as long as I've let it wait...) at 0:00.

I've yet to take a look at the tracks that trigger this to see if there's something in common to them and different from other tracks...

/Michael

The same thing happens to me, but it doesn't seem to be triggered by any certain type of tracks. Seems random to me. I find that once it hangs, advancing to the next track and then pulling out of the sled helps it to unhang when you power back up.

Mk2a. (Sorry. Should have said 'Rio Car' instead of 'Empeg'. ) I DO get the battery icon upon bootup, but never after that..

Me.

In reply to:

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Best way to sort out if it's a flakey drive is to post a serial log of the boot/during operation.

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I assume you mean while it's in the car. I'll have to hook up my laptop to it this weekend and record it. (Unless you mean an AC bootup log, in which I can get one right now..)

I will check all the obviouses, tonight after work. It's never been opened (funny enough, the one that does NOT have an issue HAS been opened up and had a second drive added by moi.)

Thanks!
Mike.

In reply to:

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.... someone has given you a copy of V3 A3. In which case, I am inclined to use the advanced technical terminology that we software engineers use in this situation:

"Na na ne na nah!!!"

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Nope, I'm safe there. Running 2.00 w/ Hijack. It DOES run telnetd and the emphatic, whereas the one that dosn't have the issue only has Hijack.. I'm going to try to disable these in DC mode and try it on the way home.

Me.