Whilest upgrading to a 2nd hardrive the darn IDE cable lost it's crimping..cry.
So is Eurtronix the only place to get a replacement cable?

This is only the 2nd time I've ever opened the Empeg. The first was because of the Hard Drive Not Found error when I first received it.

$23.00 for a little cable..ouch.

Now, now... I did the same thing once. Granted, that was before it was in the FAQ...

You can also get cables from me, which is significantly cheaper if you reside in Canada. Otherwise go for Eutronix.

Cheers

Quote:
Whilest upgrading to a 2nd hardrive

Ok, so I didn't notice the glue at first :P
By that time it was too late, caught me

A week or 2 with no tunes..I'm already going bonkers.

I checked old laptops and all around town. Couldn't find even a single drive cable.

In theory, you should be able to re-assemble the cable and use a little more glue to hold it together. Temporarily of course.

I did end up reassembling it and have the 1 drive working, thanks.

Do you believe this cable would work ?
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cablesonline/102driv44pin.html

I think that's going to be too short. Because the empeg drives are side by side, you need to get kinda creative in folding them to get them to fit. That's another advantage to the Mark Lord and Eutronix cables, they are longer compared to the stock ones and will help prevent a damaged IDE header when the drives are moving around in the shock cradle... I'd order from one of them, I've had good luck with both. I guess it just depends on if you're in the US or not.

I've already ordered the Eutronix one when the crimp popped out. I'm just curious about other cables. Good info, thanks.

Quote:
$23.00 for a little cable..ouch.

Errr.. specially made in limited numbers for this application, to support a product several years off the market with no support, probably with a minimum batch quantity of, say, 100, no doubt paid for up front by Stu....

....it's a b***** steal, if you ask me. But you didn't. So I won't comment then. So there.

If you wait for a while (September) I should be an alternative source of the original cable. However, if you expect them to be cheaper, be ready to be disappointed.

Hang on, "lost it's crimping"? What do you mean by this? The cap came off the back of the connector, or something else? Has the cable pulled out of the ICE knives under the cap?

What were you doing with sufficient force to do this?

If the shock cradle moves sufficiently on the standard or later revised cable, then the cable connector usually simply pulls off the motherboard header if it's not glued. I had a number of repairs do this due to FedEx bouncing the boxes rather hard on the way back to customer. This then meant a return I had to bear the cost of, which was not cheap when it happened about 10 times in a row. Bang goes any profit - in fact I ended out of pocket and FedEx will not discuss compensation.

If the cable connector is glued onto the IDE header on the board, then all that happens is that the cradle swings by pivoting around on the too-short cable, and the cradle end nearest the buttons hits the back of the display board, where it can leave a mark. It does not cut tracks or cause any damage. However, it's not intended to do this: the correct fix will be to have second revision of the cable done with an extra 8 mm between the first connector and the motherboard connector, which allows the correct travel of the cradle. Since this will mean significant outlay on my part when this batch runs out - well, don't hold your breath.

The IDE header on the board does NOT pull off the PCB: let me repeat that, it DOES NOT PULL OFF the board when the cable gets stressed. The famous "IDE header problem" is being blown out of proportion completely: it is a manufacturing fault in the later batch of 2A/Rio car players. It is relatively unlikely that people will have this problem. I do automatically re-solder the header regardless of model variant just to be sure, but the actual number of players I have had to repair for it can be counted on the fingers of two hands (out of a couple of hundred different repairs). The most recent ones were Cristian's player last year at the meet, and Phil's player this year at the meet.

For the header to be pulled away from the main board PCB with sufficient force to separate the soldering (highly unlikely unless the joints were already VERY bad) you would more likely rip the tracks off the main board, hence totally destroying the PCB and finishing your player off permanently. This sort of force could only result from dropping the player from about 20m onto concrete, and I suspect that in that situation, the IDE header problem would then be the least of your worries

I think you misunderstand Rob. As I understand it, the cable was glued to the drive, not the mainboard.

Looking at the orig cable , I don't see how it could support 2 drives as it's not long enough unless the drives were stacked. Am I missing something here?

It was glued to the drive and it didn't take much pressure to loosen the crimp..I've had the crimp pop on regular 'non-glued' ide drives. It's just the quality (or fragility) of the cable.

Live and learn.

Actually, I have seen and repaired several RioCar units where the stress from the overly short IDE cable *has* begun to tear the IDE header from the main PCB. So yes, it does happen, and not always just because of poor soldering at the factory.

The spacing between the header and first drive on the IDE cable is so taut that it does not allow for more than a millimetre or two of movement of the shock mount. Since the mount is regularly induced to move by vibration, and even by carrying the player by it's handle, what we are seeing is long-term consistent stress on the header solder joints. Eventually this just rips the copper traces right off the PCB -- the solder job stays intact, but the copper pads tear off!

Single drive players should have the drive plugged into the end connector on the IDE cable to prevent this stress -- the factory default was to use the middle connector for a single drive. Bad bad bad.

Dual-drive players really should have a new cable with longer spacing between the header and the first drive connector -- this will relieve stress on the header and thus extend the lifetime of the player by quite a bit.

Cheers