I started having problems with my empeg (Software version 2.0 final) a while ago. Usually, they were resolved by smacking it, so I ignored it. Then one day I got a "failed to unmask IDE header message". So I rebooted it in the car and it spent a long time on "loading music databases" but eventually started again, only from this point on, it would not remember where it was after shutting down when playing with all tracks, it would come up as an empty playlist when restarted. If I selected a playlist, it remembered it's place as normal.

Yesterday, I got a hard disk not found error, and when I opened it up, the drive cable was loose. So I reseated it as usual. Put it back into the car, it took it's usual long time on "loading music databases", only this time, it would go to "loading playlist" for a second, then back to "loading music databases", and repeat this loop. It did this both in the car, and on AC power. I could not get emplode to recognize the player.

So I poked around the FAQ and tried a few things. I looked at all the usual suspects for hard drive issues (except dying drives, don't know how to do that). The first time I ran HyperTerminal I got this.

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg52 (rob@aphex) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315
(release)) #11 Tue Apr 1 18:49:59 BST 2003
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 40103968)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15024k/16M available (964k code, 20k reserved, 372k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005a80).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, ATA DISK drive
hdb: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, 28615MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
hdb: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, 28615MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:28:0f:8
0
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
Starting player
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda), sector 5942
hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success
player(7): memory violation at pc=0x02035370, lr=0x0217ed74 (bad address=0x02b83
848, code 2)
pc : [<02035370>] lr : [<0217ed74>]
sp : bffffa34 ip : 00000000 fp : bffffa84
r10: 00000000 r9 : 0217ed68 r8 : bffffab4
r7 : 00000000 r6 : 00000000 r5 : 0217ed20 r4 : bffffa40
r3 : 02b83844 r2 : 0028072b r1 : 0217ed74 r0 : 0008016f
Flags: nZCv IRQs on FIQs on Mode USER_32 Segment user
Control: C0F6D17D Table: C0F6D17D DAC: 00000015
Function entered at [<0203525c>] from [<02035120>]
r10 = 00000000 r9 = 00000000 r8 = BFFFFAB4 r7 = 00000000
r6 = BFFFFA88 r5 = 0217ED20 r4 = 02183984
Function entered at [<02035008>] from [<02036e0c>]
r8 = 02112668 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 0217ED20 r5 = 0000017F
r4 = 0000017F
Function entered at [<02036c28>] from [<0202fd70>]
r10 = 00000000 r9 = 02112374 r8 = 0214D808 r7 = BFFFFD88
r6 = BFFFFD84 r5 = BFFFFD80 r4 = BFFFFD8C
Function entered at [<0202fa0c>] from [<0202f758>]
r10 = BFFFFEE4 r9 = 00000001 r8 = 0214D808 r7 = BFFFFEE8
r6 = 00000086 r5 = BFFFFDF4 r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<0202f718>] from [<02031668>]
r6 = 00000086 r5 = FFFFFFFF r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<02031464>] from [<02031794>]
r10 = 02031730 r9 = 00000000 r8 = 02112060 r7 = 00000000
r6 = 020000C0 r5 = 00000001 r4 = BFFFFF64
Function entered at [<02031730>] from [<020c8ea4>]
r5 = BFFFFF64 r4 = 00000001
Function entered at [<020c8dc8>] from [<02000104>]
r10 = 00000000 r8 = 00000000 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 00000000
r5 = 00000000 r4 = 00000000
Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Abnormal player termination
Player received signal 11
Starting player
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda), sector 5942
hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success
player(10): memory violation at pc=0x02035370, lr=0x0217ed74 (bad address=0x02b8
3848, code 2)
pc : [<02035370>] lr : [<0217ed74>]
sp : bffffa34 ip : 00000000 fp : bffffa84
r10: 00000000 r9 : 0217ed68 r8 : bffffab4
r7 : 00000000 r6 : 00000000 r5 : 0217ed20 r4 : bffffa40
r3 : 02b83844 r2 : 0028072b r1 : 0217ed74 r0 : 0008016f
Flags: nZCv IRQs on FIQs on Mode USER_32 Segment user
Control: C0F6D17D Table: C0F6D17D DAC: 00000015
Function entered at [<0203525c>] from [<02035120>]
r10 = 00000000 r9 = 00000000 r8 = BFFFFAB4 r7 = 00000000
r6 = BFFFFA88 r5 = 0217ED20 r4 = 02183984
Function entered at [<02035008>] from [<02036e0c>]
r8 = 02112668 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 0217ED20 r5 = 0000017F
r4 = 0000017F
Function entered at [<02036c28>] from [<0202fd70>]
r10 = 00000000 r9 = 02112374 r8 = 0214D808 r7 = BFFFFD88
r6 = BFFFFD84 r5 = BFFFFD80 r4 = BFFFFD8C
Function entered at [<0202fa0c>] from [<0202f758>]
r10 = BFFFFEE4 r9 = 00000001 r8 = 0214D808 r7 = BFFFFEE8
r6 = 00000086 r5 = BFFFFDF4 r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<0202f718>] from [<02031668>]
r6 = 00000086 r5 = FFFFFFFF r4 = BFFFFDF4
Function entered at [<02031464>] from [<02031794>]
r10 = 02031730 r9 = 00000000 r8 = 02112060 r7 = 00000000
r6 = 020000C0 r5 = 00000001 r4 = BFFFFF64
Function entered at [<02031730>] from [<020c8ea4>]
r5 = BFFFFF64 r4 = 00000001
Function entered at [<020c8dc8>] from [<02000104>]
r10 = 00000000 r8 = 00000000 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 00000000
r5 = 00000000 r4 = 00000000
Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Abnormal player termination
Player received signal 11
Starting player
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.

As anyone here who is familiar with my technical skills knows, this means nothing to me and I wouldn't know the first thing about what to do with the information. So I tried this.
After that, rebooted the player, emplode then acknowledged the player, so I tried to sync the player, and almost had success. Then I got this message in Emplode:

Synchronize failed while writing player configuration. Connection timed out. error 0x8004003e

So now when booting the player, it's stuck on "Building Music Databases" just where it was when Emplode went tits up. Back to Hyperterminal. Next try:


empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg52 (rob@aphex) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315
(release)) #11 Tue Apr 1 18:49:59 BST 2003
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 40103968)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15024k/16M available (964k code, 20k reserved, 372k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004280).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, ATA DISK drive
hdb: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, 28615MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
hdb: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, 28615MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:28:0f:8
0
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
Starting player
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.
! tags.cpp : 61:Failed to open tags (0xc0041002).
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda), sector 5942
hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success

Again, I have no idea what this means.

So I tried this.

And got this:

empeg:/empeg/bin# rwm
EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended

Search FAQ, find this, and try it. Everything appeared to go as described. Pull power cord, reboot, and this:

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg52 (rob@aphex) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315
(release)) #11 Tue Apr 1 18:49:59 BST 2003
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 40103968)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15024k/16M available (964k code, 20k reserved, 372k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004600).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, ATA DISK drive
hdb: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, 28615MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
hdb: FUJITSU MHL2300AT, 28615MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:28:0f:8
0
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
úStarting player go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.
! tags.cpp : 61:Failed to open tags (0xc0041002).
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda), sector 5942
hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success

It's still stuck on building music databases, or so it seems, then it finally goes to an empty playlist. So start emplode again, which proceeds to crash and the screen on the player goes back to "building music databases".

Any suggestions? (Please remember to try and explain things like you're talking to a slow 9 year old.)

Based on this "end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda), sector 5942", it's looking like the hard drive might be going bad. The error basically means the empeg can't read a part of the hard drive and had to give up.

Most likely to be the standard IDE header issue -- your player needs to visit a techie for close inspection and possible gentle resoldering of the IDE header on the mainboard.

-ml

I must say, for someone so non-techie, your write up is easily one of the best problem reports I've ever seen. Thank you for doing it right. Can you teach the rest of the world?