Hello
My Empeg is dead due to my stupid mixup with powercords with my printer.. I insterted a 30V 500mA printercord instead of my standard powercord..

The player started but after a few seconds it died and a smell of burned plastic spread.. I discovered this pretty fast when it died, and I yanked the cable out

but I guess it is too late now..

Please do you have any ideas what I can do? I´d happily send it to hardware support, but I haven´t got any reply when I mailed two weeks ago.

Empeg Rio Mk2a s/n 030102823

Regards,
Markus / Sweden / Audi S6

Ps. Pic attached Ds.

Good to see a fellow Swede, just wish it were for a nicer reason...

Ouch... There's a thread somewhere on the BBS with a guy that did something similar - attached an AC power supply (from some computer speakers IIRC).

There can be multiple problems - fried components, burnt off copper traces etc...
Had you been in the US I'd have said to send it to Eutronix (se S/PDIF link at top of page), but here in Europe Rob S. is probably your best bet - though he's going through personal problems, which, together with what I suspect is a sizeable backlog, is why you haven't heard back...

/Michael

That was my friend's empeg. Rob Schofield was able to fix it.

Rob S. would also be the guy that has the spares - if there are any components damaged that aren't easily sourceable. (Unless the folks in empeg Towers would have some small stock remaining... )

/Michael

Hej there

Thanks for your reply, and hopefully Rob S will answer me soon.
Btw, I need to ask, isn´t there any "whitepaper" or "electronic schedule" available regarding the Rio Empeg?
I mean if I´d leave it to a local electronic-guru, it´d be possible to for him to look up the problem. (seeking any fast solution here)

Regards,
Markus

I believe the circuit design and fault diagnosis stuff is still proprietary, a least I've never seen it. Some specifics have been mentioned, like the ~60V at the cap on the display board, but AFAIK not anything complete (ie the way all the chips are interconnected, diagnose points with expected voltages and/or signal pattern etc)

/Michael

Just to add something... It took Rob Schofield 2 months or more to fix that empeg. So, my friend's problem was not typical. The solution ultimately came to Rob in a dream. That guy is awesome.

Any europeans here used the hardware support in the US?
Is it possible to send it overseas to get it fixed? (I haven´t talked to them yet, but curious if that should work, and if someone have done it)

There isn't any empeg/RioCar hardware support in the US, it was handled in the UK and then the Netherlands. There are however various people in the US with electronics expertise that have helped people out in the past.

Posting this In memory of my Empeg.. One year has passed and it still is dead (I suppose)

Sent it to PCArnold in May 2004 for a look, during all this time all I got is one mail that he received it and it is at his desk.. no more info..

I don´t know what to expect now..

Hi there Markus.

Believe it or not (this is the absolute truth), Patrick and I were discussing another repair yesterday, and the discussion came around to your player. He has looked at it again and is planning to work on it as soon as he has the current batch of tuners out the door (today). It is a little more complex than expected.

Why am I making this post and not Patrick? He's not on the board as often as I am, and since I know about this from our discussion, I thought I'd let you know. I'll bump him again today!

I am currently looking at a working empeg. It needed several components in the PSU replacing, and a lot of charred PCB material and little bits of exploded varistor scraped off various places they shouldn't have been. I need to replace the varistor and the tracks going to it, which aren't there any more, and reassemble it, but I should be able to get it out to you in a couple of days.

I'm sorry it took so long, as you may know I tend to be very busy and occasionally loose track of things if I don't get reminded.

By the way, I haven't had any email from you for months. Have you tried contacting me at all?

pca

Out of curiosity, just what caused the power supply in this empeg to explode?

That didn't help

pca

I really need to scroll up more often.

Gee! This is amazing!

I´m happy and very grateful for the answers!

I never did loose faith, I´ve read some posts back and I did realize that this could take some time getting it fixed (if at all due to the serious damage)

Thank you Patrick! I´ll try to reach you by mail again then