OK... Here's the deal. I just dumped a new CD to my mk2a and now it's acting really strangely. First, I tried to connect via http, nada. Then I tried to connect via serial, nada. It keeps saying hda not ready, status 0x0d0. In the car, it bots up fine, up to the point where it hits the custom logo, then hangs there for like 5 minutes. THEN it will go to loading playlists for another 5 mins. THEN a song comes up, but it never starts to play. Any ideas? Or do I have to crack it open and look at the cables? Thx

Mason

Oh yeah, and the hdd is CONSTANTLY crunching. Plus the unit itself seems to be getting hot. (hotter than normal, nothing to be concerned about, yet)

Here's a screen dump from the serial port.. any ideas?

hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:04 (hda), sector 18689640
hda: status timeout: status=0xd0
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:04 (hda), sector 18689960
hda: status timeout: status=0xd0
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success
hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0
ide0: reset: success

just tried a new cable.... to no avail. The really weird thing is that if I just let it run, everything is ok in about 20-25 mins

No booooooody knows, the trouble I seein'. No booooody knows my sorrow.......

Well, it sounds like something unkind going on the hard drive. Have you tried doing an fsck? Another thought, could your cable be loose? Do you have two drives? Could a jumper be falling off? Can we see a boot log?

sure thing. real damn weird though.... after a while it boots, btw, fscking hda4 and hda5 both come back clean.

back in a few after it boots

I'll be damned.... I deleted the /empeg/var/database file, after 1 looong boot and 1 not so terribly long boot, I'm back to a fast boot. Hrmmm... go figure.

I remember Rob (I think) saying something that a corrupt database or playlist file could cause lots of trouble. The only thing is those errors you posted looked like hardware or FS errors.

I agree.... They DID act like hardware, but I finally narrowed it down to a bad idv3 tag. I think. anyway, whenever I tried to play the new song, by the Hdd icon, a w would appear. and the thing would freak out. avoid that song, all is ok. Who knows. I'm going to try to figure out why now and if I do I'll post it here.

if the 1d3v1 and 1d3v2 genre's don't match, would that be a problem?

if the 1d3v1 and 1d3v2 genre's don't match, would that be a problem?

Nope. The player software doesn't know anything about tags. and emplode only read id3v1 if id3v2 isn't available IIRC.
If you ask me, I would say that either your HD cable is bad, the IDE controller or your HD is dying, or there is simply just one single (group of) sector(s)/cylinder(s) defective on the disc, which happens to be occupied by your new song.
If I were you, I would try to get a complete boot log which shows that "irq timeout" error, and contact support.

cu,
sven