Hi. My mk2 seems to have a HD related problem. I am unsure if it is the HD at this point, but instead of pulling off that glue that keeps the hd cables seated I thought I'd go ahead and post the symptoms here in case anyone has heard of such a thing happening and might be able to identify whether its the HD(s) or the HD controller.

Today my mk2 stopped playing music, usually I just unplug it and plug it back in and it eventually goes back, but this time it just got worse, eventually reading "no hard disk found" then when it came up it showed no songs, then eventually it didn't come up again.

I brought it home and connected via the serial port. When it boots up it always complains about hdb, even though I swap the device jumper between the two drives. Sometimes it boots up and identifies both drives, but hdb has garbage every other character, like the high bit of the word is stuck. I have not been able to swap the jumper again when it does this because it doesn't seem to detect the drives at all now, even though I hear them both spin up, it just sits at "probing primary interface" a couple of times until it gives up. I suspect its the controller board.

So has anyone seen this before? What can I do about this? Is replacing the empeg the only option I have?

Thanks.

Dud hard drive cable most probably. If it's not that then the IDE header needs to be fixed. Please read the Empeg FAQ...

You should be able to get it fixed

Thanks Trevor, it seems to be a cable problem. If I push the center connector down while booting up, it boots up without hd error messages. Unfortunately I don't have anything to reliably crimp with, nor glue to keep the cable seated once it is fixed. I'll see what I can do about getting it fixed tomorrow.

However when it comes up it shows 0 songs. I guess I'll deal with that when I get the cable problem fixed because it may still be related to that.

Thanks again.

However when it comes up it shows 0 songs

Do you have two hard disks or only one? If two, click here.

Thanks Tony. Yeah it's a two-disk player, and considering the cable is clearly a problem, it's probably related.

Okay, I got the cable connectors recrimped until a new cable arrives. At first it wasn't working, but after I pushed down on the connector that goes to the motherboard it started working.

However when I boot up the player, it sees no songs. But if I drop to shell and list the contents of the "fids" directories on both drives, I see that all the songs are still there. I resynchronized with the emplode application, I could see all the songs with emplode, but after the synchronizing it still has 0 songs on the playlist. Is there something that I can do to fix this? Thanks.

At first it wasn't working, but after I pushed down on the connector that goes to the motherboard it started working.

Did you see the picture in the FAQ of the problem with the solder joints on the IDE header? Did you check for that problem?

However when I boot up the player, it sees no songs.

Please specify exactly what you mean by "sees no songs".

Do you mean that when you select "Playlists" there are no playlists to play?

Do you mean that when you search, using the alphanumeric search on the player, that there are no songs to search for?

Closely related corrollary...

When you say the songs are in Emplode, do you mean that they are visible in the Soup views? Or do you see populated playlists in Emplode?

Another question: do you notice from the bootup logs in Hyperterminal whether it's finding both disk drives, or only one?

Final question: When the player boots, how long does it take? Does it spend a long time with the text "building music databases" on the screen?

Thanks again Tony. Yes I did see that picture with the solder joint problem, but it's difficult for me to determine if I have such a problem with mine as I lack the tools here. I suspected that was probably the case and will be bringing it somewhere in a few minutes to have it fixed (if that's indeed the problem).

As for the no songs, please disregard that. It works fine now, I forgot to load a playlist, heh. I guess it lost its previously loaded playlist during the HD problems.

Thanks.