I was trying to figure out why my drive tray has been popping off of its shock mounts and I found that something was tugging on the tray causing it to twist counter-clockwise. Putting the drive tray screws in that are nearest to the rotary knob are kind of a pain now. I needed to twist the tray clockwise to get them to line up. But what was causing this? Maybe a short drive cable? Doubtful because this problem seemed new...

Then I saw that the display cable was pinched by the IDE connector on the slave drive... Here is an image of it pushing:

And a picture with the drives out. Like a goof, I took the picture after I flattened it out. The pinch happens near the "F" and "T" writen on the cable.



NOTE: Image 1 was taken in my empeg and Image 2 of the RioCar. Both are doing it.

It looks like there'd be enough slack to push the display cable to the side slightly to avoid the IDE connector. No?

That's what I ended up doing, but I the thing is I went for a long time never realizing it was even happening.. possible damaging the player several ways. Scarey.

You could try loosening the screws that hold the disk drive to the drive tray, and scootch the drive as far away from the display board as possible, then tighten them down. You can also file away the plastic corner of that IDE connector quite a bit. (I had to do that on my Mk1.)

something was tugging on the tray causing it to twist counter-clockwise.

That something is nearly always the IDE header, in the process of being torn off of the mainboard by a too-short IDE cable.

Cheers

I have the same problem on both of my players. When I first opened each of the players, I saw that the left side of the display cable (where your "F T" are printed) was folded back over the rest of the cable, with the crease about 3 or 4 wires in. It's a little trickey to get it right, but this folds the cable out of the way of the (primary?) IDE connector.

I still wish I could get two longer display cables. Even with the fold, mine are just a LITTLE bit too short and I'd like to relieve that pressure. And yes, I'll be getting longer IDE cables soon.

I've seen a couple of players where the blue wire on the cable was cut right through because of the drive connector rubbing against it. This FAQ article shows a photo of how I would repair it.

In the factory, they started folding over the display cable to keep it out of the way, however this just meant that the drive tray would rub against the cable.