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What else can affect the ability to dectect AC or DC power?

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What else can affect the ability to dectect AC or DC power? I had Ian replace the LVX04 chip at the empeg meet in Cincy two years ago. That didn't fix the problem, so Mark replaced the power jack for me a couple weeks ago. Still no dice. Empeg seems to work quite well other than this.

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Hmmm. Usually when the display light goes out and nothing happens it's the 60v PSU trying to start but taking too much current and causing the system to brownout (and cycle). Did you have a look at the 60v supply? This should come on the instant the standby light stops flashing.

Don't think it'd be the power PIC (it's the PIC that turns the display on).

Hugo

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this one also has trouble starting up on occasion. The display light will turn on and flash a couple times, but the player doesn't boot and the display remains blank except for the heating wires. The only solution is to pull the power and reapply.

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What else can affect the ability to dectect AC or DC power? I had Ian replace the LVX04 chip at the empeg meet in Cincy two years ago. That didn't fix the problem, so Mark replaced the power jack for me a couple weeks ago. Still no dice. Empeg seems to work quite well other than this.

Did you ever get this sorted out?

We've got an MK2 unit which we replaced both those parts in also and it did not fix the problem either. In addition to not sensing AC properly, this one also has trouble starting up on occasion. The display light will turn on and flash a couple times, but the player doesn't boot and the display remains blank except for the heating wires. The only solution is to pull the power and reapply.

The problem doesn't seem to be any of the resistors in the path. Does anyone know if these problems could be caused by the power control PIC?

Stu

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Pin 53 of the Strongarm goes high and low as it should

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I believe that (pin 53) is all that is necessary for this stuff to work.

The player s/w uses pin 53 to detect AC/DC. So if you see the player thinking "AC" when it's really on "DC" (or the other way round), and pin 53 has been verified to be getting the correct levels, then that input on the SA1100 is probably fried.

Just to recap: is that the actual problem here: player uses DC when on AC (or vice-versa)?

??

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Just for fun, try this:

(1) Go to the Hijack "Force AC/DC Power Mode" menu, and ensure it is set for Normal.

(2) Reboot the player using the Hijack menu to do so.

(3) What power mode does the player now think it is using?
(4) What is the "Current Mode" shown by Hijack on the "Force AC/DC Power Mode" screen?

-ml

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I noticed that the unit would always fail at the same spot which is when it loads the custom animated boot logo.

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This is an MK2 player, so is it possible it doesn't have enough memory to display the logo and carry out the boot process simultaeously?

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The logo was kind of long although I don't remeber exactly how long.

        // Mmm.. bit of a race condition here:  we shouldn't be accessing
        // the flash memory directly (playing the animation), in case empeg_state
        // wants to write to it when accessed via hijack_init() from display_animation().
        // So what we do about it is.. nothing.  Probably not an issue anyway.

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This time once Hijack was removed the player returned to normal.

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Yep. For some reason the player will not work properly even with a fresh copy of Hijack and no animation.

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Mark, I have the Empeg kernel, but it cannot be attached due to size constraints. Would you like me to e-mail it to you?

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Thanks Tom. Here's the empeg kernel I got during one of the times the unit was able to boot (obviously).

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I was unable to get the unit to boot after 20 some odd attempts, but here is the output without boot.
...

DEBUG: empeg_state_restore: loop a=5

DEBUG: empeg_state_restore: done a=5

DEBUG: empeg_state_restore: exit

DEBUG: done empeg_state_restore(), failed=0

DEBUG: calling hijack_read_tuner_id()

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Here is a successful boot log. Both are with the newest Hijack you posted.

Thanks,
Stu

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It seems to boot reliably now (at least so far) but AC/DC detection is still iffy. Running from the docking connectors on back, It wants to stay on AC most of the time from a hard reset. If I tell Hijack to reboot for normal operation, it seems to detect correctly. Anything separate from this in Hijack that would prevent proper detection of power source?

Thanks,
Stu

Okay, at least now we're back to debugging the hardware again.

There's something *really noisy* on the tuner serial port signals. Maybe there's a short in/near the docking connector, or perhaps the line-driver chip for the tuner serial port is fried/flakey.

I think it's quite likely that the same problem is also what is causing the AC/DC detection to flake out. So there's two paths for investigation now, and hopefully they'll lead to a common component or two on the board (?).

It would be useful (again) to see the boot logs for both success and failure now.

Cheers

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I can no longer make it fail to boot, but I can give you a boot log with successful DC detection and without. The strange thing is even when Hijack thinks it's in AC mode, the boot log reads DC. I am wondering why the disconnect?

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I can no longer make it fail to boot, but I can give you a boot log with successful DC detection and without. The strange thing is even when Hijack thinks it's in AC mode, the boot log reads DC. I am wondering why the disconnect?

That's simple: When it's on DC and Hijack thinks it's on AC, this happens because the home-dock loopback test succeeds

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Is the home-dock's loopback wire loose in the docking connector? If so, then that could explain all of this trouble..

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which wire is the loopback wire? I've not heard much about it.

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I went in to the player and tested the serial lines for shorts or loose connections. There were none to be found. Is it possible that the RS232 transceiver has a fault even if the other serial functions (loading firmware) work fine? We've replaced the tranceivers before, but there were more overt signs of malfunction than here.