This week I bought a empeg MK2a player from someone at ebay. I knew that the player is not working correctly. So I had to repair the display (two burnt fuses on the mainboard) and a problem with the IDE controller. (Cold soldered connection at a buffer chip). (At purchase time I only knewed about the display problem, not about the other errors )
Now everything is working but the IR receiver. The player does not react if I press at a keys on the remote control. If I exchange the display board with one of my spare empegs the remote control works as expected.
So the problem must be on the display board itself. All the other parts on the display board works as expected (Display, Buttons, LED)
Any idea what can cause this problem? Detective ir receiver? Any possibility to measure some signals somewhere?
Thanks for any help

Firstly, load hijack and hook up ethernet.

Boot your empeg, let it sit for 10 minutes and then browse to http://your.empeg.ip/proc/empeg_ir

Then hit lots of keys on your remote and hit reload on yor browser. Report back with both sets of data.

Alex, for more information on the proc/empeg_ir thing, click here. The problem with the IR receiver could be a bad receiver, or it could be that it's just got a loose solder joint somewhere.

Here's the result of the empeg_ir thing:

After player startup:
Valid sequences: 0
Repeated sequences: 0
Unfulfilled repeats: 0
Malformed sequences: 0
Spurious transitions: 0
Missed interrupts: 0
Timings buffer hwm: 0

After a button press on the display (not the remote):
Valid sequences: 0
Repeated sequences: 0
Unfulfilled repeats: 0
Malformed sequences: 0
Spurious transitions: 0
Missed interrupts: 0
Timings buffer hwm: 12

After 10 minutes and lot of remote presses:
Valid sequences: 0
Repeated sequences: 0
Unfulfilled repeats: 0
Malformed sequences: 0
Spurious transitions: 0
Missed interrupts: 0
Timings buffer hwm: 12

Tony, I don't see any loose solder joints on the display. (At least around the ir sensor))

Dead as a Dodo. Either (a) the detector is not getting power, (b) the signal path is broken, or (c) the detector itself is dead and needs replacing. I'm going to eliminate detector grounding problems as that causes missed interrupts.

Got a multimeter?

Yes, I have my multimeter ready

It's a defective IR receiver on the small daughter board on the display board. Solution is to clip it off completely and replace it. I have some of these sensors still available - same old story, wait until the end of September and I should be able to help.

I was going to get you to check the the power and signal paths on the board, even though my gut feeling was that the receiver itself is dead anyway.
I'll defer to Rob now anyway. He's the repair expert.

If you are outside of Europe, then PM me your snail-mail address, and I'll post a new IR-receiver module to you.

Cheers

Sorry, but I'm from Switzerland.
Maybe I can repair it somehow. Try it again this evening...

Mark, thanks for the offer.
Can you ship it to Switzerland? I can send you the money for the shipping through paypal.
I think the actual ir receiver can not be fixed anymore.

Just PM me with a mailing address and I'll air-mail one to you -- it will take a couple of weeks to get to there. The cost is near-zero this way.

If you want it faster, I think the express postage will be CAD$36, which is somewhere in the ballpark of EU20 these days.

Cheers

I'll air-mail one to you -- it will take a couple of weeks to get to there


It will really take that long?

I air-mailed some CDs from Alaska to Rob Schofield in the Netherlands a while back, and they arrived within four or five days.

Was I just lucky?

tanstaafl.

Don't know about packages but I mailed a birthday card to my mother recently and it made it in under 60 hours.

I would say we try it out how long it will take. (The slower way) I just sent mark my address and will report back when I get the replacement.
Thanks

It's travelling air-mail, from one civilized nation to another, so it is very possible that it could arrive in 3-5 days. So I'm quoting 10 (business) days just to be less tense about it.

I mean, sure, it's not like I'm airmailing something to a country like Tanzania or the USA, where delivery times normally vary from 2-6 weeks.

Cheers

Touché Mark Lord. Touché.

Mark,

I received your letter with the ir sensor yesterday morning. So it toke less than 5 business days! Not bad.

In the meantime I replaced the faulty ir receiver and the remote works now as expected!
But I'm a bit confused. I always thought the ir sensor is the part in the most right position on the display board (the one that looks like two cut LEDs). But it learned that the ir sensor is the thing on the left side of the blinking LED. What ist this other part for?

Thanks Mark!

There are two IR "sensors" in the empeg. One is for consumer IR e.g. the remote and the other is for IrDA. The IrDA one isn't used as standard but Empire/Palantir uses it to connect a Palm PDA.

Hey, congratulations on getting it all working nicely again!

And yes, that second "led pair" gizmo is the IRDA "transceiver": one of them is an I/R LED for transmitting, and the other is an I/R sensor for receiving. Apparently useful for PC<-->Empeg communication sans wires.. or for Mark Cushman's Palantir program for remote playlist manipulation etc..

Cheers!