I ran the disk builder on two brand new IBM Travelstars last night while both connected to the Mk2. The formatting of both drives seems to have worked and the stress testing of 'hda' started. I went to bed letting it run for about 7 hours. It was my intention to wake up in the morning and flip/flop the drives to run the stress test on 'hdb'.

I connected 'hdb' to the empeg alone on the middle drive connector. Yes, I did remove the jumper making it Device 0. The output from Hyperterm looked good (drive detected a couple times) but I got the "sick Tux" message on the VFD and nothing happens. Off hand, I can't remeber the error the serial port threw up. So, I figured I would connect the other drive at the same time (jumpered Device 1). At this point, I have what were originally formatted as master/slave reversed from their formatting position. I still got the sick Tux with the same error.

I have been thinking about it all day at work and I now assume (hope) the drives are okay and they will work when returned to their original position. However, this makes no sense. When I get home I am going to put them back the way they were and load 2.00b11 player software. Hopefully they will work.

I really wanted to stress both drives since the morons that packed it did a worse job than Digital River. Hopefully this is a disk builder issue and not one with the drives. Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? I have only used the builder once before and I remeber it being a fairly mindless process. Thanks

(1) I really doubt that anything diskbuilder does could harm the drives.

(2) "Sick Tux" (more stoned than sick..) means that the kernel was unhappy with the drive(s). Meaning they did not respond, or (possibly) the root filesystem was not found (?).

A peek at the serial port output should tell the story.

The ATA (IDE) standards recommend having the MASTER drive (0) on the END of the cable, and the slave, if present, in the middle.

Cheers

Mark, what the heck would you know about ATA standards?!?

Funny guy, funny guy..

-ml

Thanks Mark. I'm not saying that the builder nuked my drives, but they worked and one ran over night. Now they don't work (on the disk builder). I was using and formatted with master in the middle. I will try placing them the way you say and see what happens. At this point, I am fairly certain that both drives have an Empeg filesystem on them. I will post the serial junk here when I get home. Thanks.

For what it's worth, I believe SB assembles them backwards (master in the middle), and they seem to work well enough like that. Most drives are pretty tolerant of goofs like that.

If your two drives are the exact same models, it probably won't make any difference which way around.

Cheers

> [link] morons that packed it

Online stores as amateur as that make me worry.

Online stores a amateur as that make me worry.

Me too, but I have ordered big things from them before, plus they are in New Jersey. So, it's a close to me as can get without paying sales tax. This is the first time I've bought something delicate from them. Never again.

So what does the sick tux screen look like? I've never seen it.

It's just good ole Tux, looking somewhat stoned, with 'X's for eyes. Unplug your drive cable if you want to view it.

Cheers

Sick Tux:

Too cute.

OK, when I got home I immediately flashed to 2.00b11 car player. The flash went fine and I just uploaded some tunes. emplode sees the correct ammount of space, so I am not going to mess with a good thing. The disk builder my have an issue with something. I will give my specs:

• Empeg Mk2
• Two IBM Travelstar IC25N030ATDA04-0 (30GB)
• Original Empeg drive cable I've had for 16 months in good shape
• Disk Builder 2.00b11

Thanks for the help guys.

come on tony.. we all know u have seen that before.. u knwo everything about the player..

we all know u have seen that before

No, I've never booted the player without hard disks connected. I haven't even disconnected the hard disks since 2.0 has been installed.