Well,
After a 3 month hiatus, my RIO/Empeg is alive and kicking (and playing music!!!). It all started one dreary day (ok, I won’t bore you with a long story) but you all know what happened, I got the dreaded No Hard Disk Found…Contact Support error. After deciding it wasn’t the IDE cable or any of the other things on the FAQs, we replaced the CS4231A chip (remember the chip’s name (scary!!!)). That didn’t work but because of a minimum order, I purchased 7 (which I think would work now). We replaced it with a second one of my chips that I bought with no luck. Well, MACZROOL sent me one of the original chips and we tried that and guess what, didn’t fix it. Well, this stumped everyone except MLORD who offered to look at it if I sent him the board. Well how could I pass up that kind of offer, so I sent it to him. He looked at it and found out the Ethernet chip was the culprit. Unfortunately he destroyed a pin on the LVX4245 chip and the pads on the SMSC91C96 and LVX4245(when we pulled up the pin, we didn’t see one). I ordered 2 new SMSC91C96($10/each) chips and 4 LVX4245 ($2 each) chips (2 of 2 different sizes). We soldered the new chips on and resoldered the USB chip (don’t know the part number). Tested it and it came up fine!!! Put it back into the case and voila, a working RIO that plays music again and can transfer my music over Ethernet again!!!

So, again thanks to TFabris, Maczrool, especially MLord, and a Huge thanks to the lady that solders SMT chips so professionally, without all of you, my RIO would be another paperweight. THANKS!!!!

Link to MLords page: http://rtr.ca/NHDFCS_empeg/
Link to previous thread1: http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_tech&Number=202677&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=
Link to previous thread2: http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_tech&Number=206413&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=
Link to LVX91C96 thread: http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_tech&Number=208788&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=
Original Thread: http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_tech&Number=196999&page=4&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=

Well, very good!

I'm puzzled as to how the D5 line on the ethernet chip managed to die in the first place, but those things do happen from time to time with sensitive electronic devices in harsh environments, so..

Cheers