starting a couple of days ago, my unit just hangs. The screen freezes and either immediately or within a couple of minutes, it stops playing audio. At that point, the only thing I can do is reseat it. the weirder thing is that it picks up not exactly when it froze, but as if it were still running in the background until i removed power.

This never happens while I'm using the aux input.

I'm using 2.0 final and hijack v413 and emphatic v2.04. I've tested it with emphatic off and it still happens.

Any sign of disk error messages on console? Any disk symptoms? Does it happen both in the car and on AC power?

no messages about disk errors, how do i check?

happens both on ac power and in car

Exactly - serial link. Also had you noticed any stuttering or other audio glitching in your playback?

ok, i have the output of a normal boot, then of a memory test below. and no, there has not been any stuttering. i've had my unit for 3 or 4 years with not a single hiccup!

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 (hugo@empeg.com)
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg52-hijack-v417 (hijack@rtr.ca) (gcc version
2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Sat Jan 15 19:12:21 EST 2005
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
Checking for extra DRAM:
c1000000: wrote ffffffff, read e91ba9f0
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 10101515) 16MB DRAM
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15008k/16M available (984k code, 20k reserved, 368k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005a80).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, 19077MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=38760/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman (erik@vt.edu)

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:22:05:e
b
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hdc4 but got error 6
Error mounting partitions (possibly already mounted)
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To ComðStarting
player
Timezone: US/Central
Hijack: intercepting config.ini

hijack: removed menu entry: "Serial Port Assignment"
khttpd: listening on port 80
kftpd: listening on port 21
opening display...
Using non-standard cache size 124 (adjustment 10)
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00 2003/04/01.
emphatic v2.04 (built Aug 17 2004 21:05:49) running as pid 12
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Mar 26 2003
Vcb: 0x407cd000

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 (hugo@empeg.com)
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...
0000 empeg-car (issue9) board test version 0.05 <hugo@empeg.com>
0100 ram test starting
0110 testing ic 1 (0-15mb, low word)
0120 testing ic 2 (0-15mb, high word)
01f0 ram test done
0200 ide detect
0210 command issued
0220 drive id IBM-DJSA-220
02f0 ide ok
0300 dsp/i2c test
03f0 dsp/i2c ok
0400 temperature detect
0410 temperature is 44
04f0 temperature ok
0500 usb detect
0510 usb rev 1012
05f0 usb ok
0600 ethernet detect
0610 ethernet rev 334b
06f0 ethernet ok
0700 cs4231 detect
0710 cs4231 rev a0
07f0 cs4231 ok
00f0 tests complete

And does that serial log output include the moment in time when the freeze happens?

Next thing to try is to see if it's simply trying to cache up a bad track at the moment of the freeze. Play a single tune instead of a large playlist. If that works without freezing, play larger and larger subsets of your collection until you get the freeze again. Try to narrow down which track might be bad and remove it.

I've played more than a few albums since it started happening and I believe it does it on anything. also, i've played the same song twice, sometimes with success, sometimes with a failure

I just upgraded hijack to 417 to be on the safe side, and removed the line ;@EXEC_ONCE /usr/local/bin/emphatic from config.ini. now the letters "sr" appear after the [32/38] track listing - what does that mean?

also, i ran hyperterminal again and let it play till it crashed (this time induced by hitting the left button a few times) and there was nothing additional output.

what next?

weird, i've never noticed the sr before!

ok, i've set it to repeat a single song and will see if it fails.

Is there an actual utility to use to scan the drive? i could get a laptop to ide dongle and connect it to a computer running linux and run fsck or something if that's recommended.

i ran fsck and it didn't report any errors, so i rebooted and started the 1/1 song play again. if it works for the remaining hour of my work day, that should be a good start.
by the way, thanks a lot for the help!

fsck output:

empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck -fay /dev/hda4
Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/
hda4 is mounted.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/hda4: 10054/152576 files (5.2% non-contiguous), 4508808/4862970 blocks

well, an hour of Hells Bells and it's still running. I think I'll use Jemplode to dump the whole thing to my computer and see how that goes. if it works, i could then dump it right back. I've done a lot of tweaking to the id3 tags from within emplode, so i prefer that version to the copy i still have on my hard drive.

but if that fails, i guess i can scrub and start over. are you thinking it may be a software issue that could be overcome, or more likely physical damage? couldn't i run fsck with a parameter to check for bad sectors?

Neither. I'm guessing that there's just a track you've uploaded that's somehow corrupted. Bad frame data or some such. All you need to do is figure out which one it is and delete it.

Think... Did you put any new tunes on the player just before the problem happened the first time?

Usually when this happens, it's a pirated tune you got from one of those file swapping services. This hardly ever happens with tunes you've ripped yourself. It's one of the many reasons I prefer to rip my own songs from my own CDs whereever possible.

hmm, i'm not sure if i put anything on there that recently, but i don' t think so.

i was just using jemplode and tried to use the download function, but after selecting a directory and saying ok, it returned me back to the main screen. i thought it was supposed to download all the mp3's...?

my plan is to wipe out the files and re-upload them. any suggestions on the best way to do this?

about jemplode, i didn't realize you have to select actual tracks then choose download. i had the unit itself selected, assuming it would get everything. an error message would be nice, or maybe a help file

I have doubts about it being one or more bad tracks. I'm noticing that the moment i click the next or previous button, it hangs. I've tried 4 or 5 playlists.

The download of songs seems to work - i've gotten several albums worth already.

what else can i try to narrow this down? perhaps download all tracks, then rip a cd and upload only it?

yes, small playlists. i'm focusing on one album that i have played many times over the years. it is now intermittent, but here's what i have seen:

selecting an individual song works about half the time, half the time hangs with the name of the selected song highlighted, about to play. when it does work, hitting the next/prev button does NOT cause it to fail.

selecting the whole album starts playing about half the time, and when it does, will play the whole album (or at least the first two songs before i try something else) UNLESS i hit the next or previous button, in which case it dies every single time.

If i click down down down down so that every song plays, it will hang every single time.

Could this be a two disk player with only one disk working?

nope, just the one 20GB unit that it came with...

It might be worthwhile to try and turn on the disk access indicator - see if it is failing when trying to read the hard drive.

I turned on the LED. The hard drive light came on with gray bar, then turned white when the audio started, then back to gray after 30 seconds or so. 10 minutes later and the grey bar is still there, meaning drive still spun up.

I've downloaded all the files (with no errors BTW) via jemplode, and i'm about ready to scrub and reload one chunk at a time. Is there a preferred method for this, or is it fine to simply delete every track?

cool, i'll do that right now. is http://www.empeg.com/downloads/car2-builder-20011022.upgrade the builder i should use for my rio car? it says 'test builder' so i wanted to verify.

Also, in hyperterminal, i discovered by accident that ctrl-C gets me to the shell prompt. is that how i should be doing it?

ok i started the builder and it's currently doing the stress test. i did get the following error, is it normal?

set_blocksize: b_count 1, dev ide0(3,4), block 1!
EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,4)): ext2_check_descriptors: Block bitmap for group
64 not in group (block 3)!
EXT2-fs: group descriptors corrupted !
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda4,
or too many mounted file systems
hdstress.cpp 189 ( 19): Poll result=0 on fd=5
hdstress.cpp 189 ( 19): Poll result=0 on fd=5

Okay. Break it and run the builder again. I suspect that this is the issue that I ran into previously, where the builder software is unable to completely build the drive. Please rerun the builder.

ok, i did it again and it seems to have completed successfully, check out this full output:

Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg49 (mac@aphex.internal.empeg.com) (gcc versi
on 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #130 Mon Oct 22 18:52:07 BST 2001
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 10101515)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15024k/16M available (964k code, 20k reserved, 372k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005180).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, 19077MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=38760/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman (erik@vt.edu)

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:22:05:e
b
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initDrive(s) appear to be already built. Skippi
ng.
Press return to continue anyway - anything else to start a shell.

warning: can't open /etc/mtab: No such file or directory
Making first drive...
mke2fs 1.14, 9-Jan-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/
hda4 is mounted.
Linux ext2 filesystem format
Filesystem label=
152000 inodes, 19451880 blocks
0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
2375 block groups
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
64 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
8193, 24577, 40961, 57345, 73729, 204801, 221185, 401409, 663553,
1024001, 1990657, 2809857, 5120001, 5971969, 17915905,

Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

real 1m18.027s
user 0m0.360s
sys 0m3.440s
hdstress.cpp 189 ( 30): Poll result=0 on fd=5
hdstress.cpp 189 ( 30): Poll result=0 on fd=5
Stressing /dev/hda: Spinning down.
hdstress.cpp 189 ( 30): Poll result=0 on fd=5

So are you letting it run the stress test?

yes now it's running the stress test and i'm headed to lunch. how exactly do i put the developer image on at this point? it says to do it with the unit 'still powered up' but it also says to pull the plug when you want to stop the stress test. which one comes first? in any case, i'll let it run for the next hour and look for your response when i come back