A few weeks ago, a whole handful of problems surfaced with my player. I'm feeling that I need to get send it somewhere for service, but maybe you could help me troubleshoot a bit so that whomever ends up repairing it will have some idea where to start?

RioCar w. 60+80GB drives, latest HiJack, 2.00Final.

a) The first sign of trouble was a very rare, very seldom "No Hard Disk Found" message on the player. I think this happened on very cold mornings. Usually, letting the player sit a bit while the car was warming up fixed it. Yet, it was so seldom that I don't know if that was a "fix" or not.

b) Even more rare, the audio would seem to "shift" off center to one speaker or another. This got VERY common a few weeks ago. Audio would come from both channels, but not at the same volume. I've checked all wiring to and from the amp, but that didn't seem to fix it. Then one day it stopped. Maybe the amp is going?

c) Again, rare. The audio from the player can get "garbled" up and sound currupt. I'm thinking loose cable, bad cable or dry solder?

d) The Low Voltage icon comes on all the time. Also, I rarely have the player reboot itself. Usually when the defrost is on. I do have one of those "Power Pullies" on my car that diverts some energy away from the alternator. I had this problem before installing the pulley, but I'm thinking that it certainly isn't helping. Planning on taking that off very soon. Could running the player under "Low Voltage" burn something out?

e) The alternator whine that I finally eliminated last fall by replacing the amp is back all of a sudden. It first started to rear its head on only rainy days, but now it is constant. I'll have to check all my wiring again to see if a connection is loose. Maybe this too is due to the amp? On top of the whine, I can hear "data like" noise when the car is off and the drives are being read.

f) Today the player booted to the static logo and got stuck like 4 boots in a row. (I've only seen this before with a loose jumper on the drive). A few hours later, the player booted up with a "Player Preferences (or Info?) Lost" message. All my settings were gone such as fader, volume, etc. Last played FID was still okay.

The player seems to run okay on the power adapter in-home. Could this all be due to a dry solder connection and a ground that has worked its way loose in car? Is low voltage killing my player?

Sounds like you might have a wiring harness problem like possibly this. That would account for the whine, the sudden loss of audio channels, and the low voltage indicator.

The hard disk problems might be related to that or they might be one of the standard hard disk issues.

For D, I would recommend doing like the FAQ mentions, and run your constant power line straight to your battery. I ran I believe a 14 gauge wire in my old car, placing a fuse close to the battery. It completely solved any issues with the battery icon coming on.

Check that your docking plug is nice and clean - I've found the contacts to get a little dirty over time, but it's easily clean with contact spray or WD40.

Thanks guys! I never thought of the docking connectors! I guess over time it would make sense for those to get gummed up. I already have a direct ground to my battery for the empeg. If I do the power as well, what size fuse do you recommend?

I'm feeling a little better about this now. I'm going to check out the possible hard drive issues too.

If I do the power as well, what size fuse do you recommend?

Just about any fuse will do, your player shouldn't ever draw more than a couple amps. If you're running your amplifier off of the same wire, it will likely need to be more than that. I run my amp and empeg off of the same power wire that runs to the battery, and I think I have a 15 or 30 amp fuse on that line.

But the more important thing is to make sure that the fuse is in a special weatherproof housing and is as close as possible to the battery, i.e., mounted in the engine compartment. This is so that your car doesn't burn down if the wire insulation gets frayed somewhere and shorts to the frame.

Whoah... get this:

I swapped out my wiring harness in my car (still using my old Mk2 sled) with my Mk2a harness and was having the same issues. Also checked all wiring I could see, including wiring for the amps etc.

So I come home and pull out the backup Mk2 to put the drives in so I can send the Mk2a out to Eutronix for repair. As I open the quirky player, something looks wrong. The drive tray is sitting in the player at an angle. Odd. Could the drive cable be pulling the tray so hard its on an angle? Then I realize that I had mounted the drives onto the tray backwards then put the tray in the player backwards. Oh boy. As I take the side screws out, I hear a clunk of metal. Having the tray in there backwards pulled on the anti-shock bumpers so hard that they ripped out of the bracket they hook into.

Could this have been causing my problems (putting it back together as I type this to test it out)? Maybe something was getting shorted? Or maybe that funny angle was pulling on the cable so hard that a borderline solder connection for the IDE header was pulling loose?

Weird. Maybe I should be surprised that in all the times I've opened up empegs for hard drive swaps, this is the first time I've done something like this.

Ooops...

I'm wondering if the drive tray for the Mk2 and Mk2as are differant.. My Mk2 has no drives in it, just the tray, so to be honest, I don't know if it's in there the proper way of if I just tossed it in there. Feeling like an idiot now.

I moved the drives around to so the sled would go in like it does on the Mk2, but there is no way it'll fit in that way... so I guess my only problem was that the shock mount came off. This didn't cause the tray to drop onto the board though, but it would have be tossing around.

Being tossed around like that would cause havoc with your IDE header. Check to see if it was pulled from the main board at all. That would give you a lot of the other disk based symptoms.

As far as I know, the trays and shock mount structures are identical.

Even with the tray properly installed, the factory IDE cable is so short that any motion on the bay (which is their purpose of course, to move around that is) means severe stress on the mainboard IDE header.

Yours is now in definite need of repair (resoldering at a minimum).

Cheers

Weird. Mark Lord just looked at my player and noted a few things:

1) The IDE head had already been repaired. This was a "new" board that David popped in when I had a bad audio chip. It was either refurbished or had a little preventitive work done to it.

2) Under examination, the pins looked just fine and the unit worked fine when booted up (not in car I assume).

Even though the player booted and worked okay, Mark touched up the connections anyway. I have some new cables coming from Eutronix, so when I get the board back, hopefully everything will work.

If it doesn't, then I may have some problem that is not related to the IDE header or the cables. (FWIW: The drives and cable are in a Mk2 now and are working fine with the exception of a new "slight pause" that happens after 12 seconds of each new track). Maybe I got lucky hooking up the drives and cable to the Mk2?

This was a "new" board that David popped in when I had a bad audio chip. It was either refurbished or had a little preventitive work done to it.

It would have been a preventative measure. Once I got fed up of players coming in for problems with the IDE cables and headers, every player that came in for service (and every replacement board) had the IDE pins resoldered and the drive cable replaced whether they looked like they needed it or not.

Thanks for clearing that up David! (Nice to see you stopping by too!)

I'm still waiting for my player to get back, but if this new cable doesn't fix it, I'm not sure what the issue could be.