ok, i have searched the FAQ and the BBS thoughly, and i cant find an answer.
I have had my player back from support about a month and have just gotten my database to a healthy size. today i went through and cleaned up some and went to stab it back into the sled and after it booted there was no audio. The display suggests that everything is business as usual, but still no audio.
i brought the player back onto the house and hooked it up to my stereo, no audio.
I stressed out drank a beer and sat back to assess the situation.
so far i have:

I have tried to reboot it countless times, i have tried to reload the firmware (beta 11 in case anyone is intrested) and still i have no luck. I hope someone can offer some solutions, please. My worst fear is that the output chip is blown, or something horrific like that. i have not cracked the player open yet. i am hoping that it wont be nessissary. here is the boot log as well.

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 (hugo@empeg.com)
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-empeg50 (mac@aphex.internal.empeg.com) (gcc versi
on 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #8 Fri Feb 8 18:48:15 GMT 2002
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 10101989)
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 Universit
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 206f6972 'rio '
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 0000
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004900).
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: IBM-DARA-212000, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DARA-212000, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DARA-212000, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DARA-212000, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DARA-212000, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DARA-212000, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: IBM-DARA-212000, 11513MB w/418kB Cache, CHS=23392/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman (erik@vt.edu)

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:22:07:c
5
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
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 init player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00-be
ta11 2002/02/08.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Feb 7 2002
Vcb: 0x4086d000

Did you notice any other symptoms after it rebooted? For instance, did it seem to have forgotten its flash settings? Such as balance, dimmer, volume, loudness, etc.?

no it remembered everything. My dimmer setting were correct, fader, balance, EQ settings, everthing was there. from looking through the menus, it seems nothing is wrong. I put it back in the car and toogled to aux mode, just to see what happened. All i got was a pop as it switched to aux mode. I dont have anything running through the aux channel so i dont know if it's getting any throughput, but i am assuming it probably will.

I dont have anything running through the aux channel so i dont know if it's getting any throughput, but i am assuming it probably will.

If you have the capability to hook something up to Aux, that would be an interesting diagnostic step. It would narrow down the location of the problem.

All in all, though, I'd say it's time to give David a ring.

i think david it tired of hearing from me. This will be the 3rd time this unit has gone in for repair. The two previous time has been defective hard drives. i considered selling it when i got it fixed. Only problem it i like it so much it would be very hard to find something to replace it with.

This may seem very obvious, but have you checked the volume level? I've had this happen to me once.

I have spent ten minutes scratching my head at why my tuner didn't work to discover it was paused.

i know the feeling of stupidity. i double and triple checked myself before posting.

i spent two hours with it last night, still no luck. i guess im going to have to pull the dash apart to put something in the AUX channel.
Am i crazy:
im thinking about selling it (when i get it fixed) becasue i have had so many problems. It's not that i dont like it. i just get real upset when it goes on the fritz. and this will be the 3rd time. im at a point where all i do it wait for it to go down again. i would like to think the problem is something i am doing but i know that is not the case. i bring it in every night, dont leave in the car for more than 30 minutes if im not driving, i even hold it with two hands to make sure i dont drop it. i dont know what else to do.

Try these:

With the player connected up to your home amp, turn the volume up on the amp - do you get any 'electronic noise'?

Double check that the unit is playing - time is counting up, visuals are moving etc. Also check the EQ settings.

Try plugging one RCA in and touch the shield of the other one to the player case.

Check that there are no icons on the screen that shouldn't be there - is the player thinging it is on phone mute?

there is no electronic noise when home amp is at full volume.
the visuals are moving and the time is counting
no audio when one RCA plugged in and other sheild grounded
in Emplode i have the phone mute set to never so if it is muteing (and i dont think it is) i wouldn't know why. there is nothing out of the ordinary happening.
should i go ahead and contact support?

You just talked to support - that is Davids job :-) I'm sure he'll be more than happy to help you out further