Well, i've had my empeg for quite some time now, love it. Recently I've gotten the urge to try and lengthen the already unbuffered display cable, which is generally a no-no. I thought i'd try to just got a foot longer. I went to the local electro store and bought the small pitch ribbon cable and re-used the same connectors at the ends. Well I must have either crossed one of the wires or something and now I have no display at all. I put the stock cable back on. Of course i checked the 3 fuses and 2 of them blew out. I then put new ones on and now I get the flashing LED but no VFD. (no the nipple is not broken). Once in a while the LED will just fade on and off like sleep mode, then turn on bright and stay that way, like it is trying to turn on the VFD but it's not happening. The player remains active while this goes on. I then took an ohmmeter and measured some of the local resistors next to the display connector. The two ones labeled "123" (12K ohm) weren't giving any value, so I then put on two new ones as well. Still, no luck. The player functions, I get music, etc, but no display. Any ideas? Did I damage the display board somehow? Any other resistors or fuses I should check? Thanks alot guys;

Pete

btw: paul gzerlak thanks for the e-mails, I did get it to work eventually, it was a result of cold soldier's on the IDE pads.

anyone?

Greetings!

Give it a little time. It is a slow day. The empeg folks are celebrating Roger's last day and the Cincinnati meet is about to start.

ohhh... ok

Update. I created an entirely new ribbon cable, and now I seem to have a display. However, it is shifted to the left and as soon as its done booting up, it goes dim to where I can barely see it like the caps are losing voltage. I measured the caps on the top and get about 12v on each one.

Well the dimming problem seems to have dissapeared. But, the display is still shifted.. very odd. It shifts in differnet areas as well, if I power it down and back up its in a different place. Seems like some sort of microcontroller is bad ?

Are you

SURE

and I mean

REALLY SURE

that you plugged the ribbon cable back in correctly and not off-by-one-pin in either the horizontal or vertical directions?

Yes. I'm sure.

If that were the case, the display would be "garbled". Mine is perfect, except its not centered. I replaced the two resistors below the display connector labeled "123" with resistors of the same value. The value of those resistors are 12Kohm right? I've even removed these resistors and it the display is the same way, leads me to believe those resistors have nothign to do with the display.

Ok well I got the display working finally, it was just a bad punch downed ribbon cable. But, now all of a sudden my player will not power on. When I apply power, nothing. When I remove the 3v jumper by the PSU, the blue USB light comes on and the standby LED goes on and off like its in sleep mode, but no RED led on the motherboard. Could someone tell me what to look for in the PSU area? Thanks..

You know, when this is all said and done, I'm going to link this thread from the FAQ, in the section where it says not to try to extend your display.

If you wish... But honestly this is all due to my terrible electronics skills. It ends up I could have extended the display a tad and had no problems. This all started when I decided to make my own ribbon cable. I could get more into detail but it would make you guys cry.

Don't dispair dude, you're almost there, just a little bit further......

On the plus side, think of all the interesting things you've learned along the way and the heightened emotions you've felt as first it went sadly badly wrong, then....

If it weren't for the pioneering skills of you "risk takers", the empeg would be just a fookin' good a car player and nothing else.

Cheers, Sim

Thanks . I'm that kind of person, no matter how good it is, or how much i love it, theres alwasy something thats modifyable (is that a word?). Unfortuantly I don't have a schematic for this unit, if I did, i'd probably have it fixed by now. I"ve sent e-mails to the newer support e-mail address but i'm sure hes overwhelmed. Maybe someone here has a schematic? Or has capasitor values for the PSU? All these damn surface mount pieces aren't easy to diagnose. Thanks alot

Well I notice when I plug the unit in the USB light flashes quickly, so it looks like theres a short somewhere. Or a capasitor is gone....

Update.. When I unplug pin 7 (starting from upper left corner) on the display, it boots up fine, but I do not have button functionality. The pad that goes to that pin on the mainboard comes from one of the fuses, it puts out -/+ 3v. Could someone on here verify how much voltage that pad puts out on their mark 2a? It would be much appreciated. I'm getting closer!

As the saying goes:

If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features.

:-)

It would be nice to come to this board and see a new post to this thread with positive feedback rather than opinionated remarks. Thanks;

Calm down. He was being funny.

Oh, i'm sorry. ha ha

Symptoms match EXACTLY those of a blown fuse.

Must've blown another one after fixing it the first time. Recheck them.

Thanks for the post Mark (btw hijack kicks ass), but there are only 3 SMT fuses near the display area, and I must have checked them 20 times and they're all good. Unit is now in the hands of Stu with eutronix, I will keep you guys updated.