My trusty player locked up after the boot trying to play a track (encoded in mp3) which it played flawlessly an hour before turning off the car.
Now upon boot up it displays the track it played before and attempts to start the animation, but everything freezes and the unit is unresponsive to any buttons. Trying to connect to it via jemplode doesn't work though the unit is pingable on the network.
So I hooked it up to the terminal via serial. Below is the log:

=========================
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 kern.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg55-hijack-v508 (hijack@rtr.ca) (gcc version9
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
Checking for extra DRAM:
c1000000: passed.
c1100000: passed.
c1200000: passed.
c1300000: passed.
c1400000: passed.
c1500000: passed.
c1600000: passed.
c1700000: passed.
c1800000: passed.
c1900000: passed.
c1a00000: passed.
c1b00000: passed.
c1c00000: passed.
c1d00000: passed.
c1e00000: passed.
c1f00000: passed.
c2000000: passed.
c2100000: passed.
c2200000: passed.
c2300000: passed.
c2400000: passed.
c2500000: passed.
c2600000: passed.
c2700000: passed.
c2800000: passed.
c2900000: passed.
c2a00000: passed.
c2b00000: passed.
c2c00000: passed.
c2d00000: passed.
c2e00000: passed.
c2f00000: passed.
c3000000: passed.
c3100000: passed.
c3200000: passed.
c3300000: passed.
c3400000: passed.
c3500000: passed.
c3600000: passed.
c3700000: passed.
c3800000: passed.
c3900000: passed.
c3a00000: passed.
c3b00000: passed.
c3c00000: passed.
c3d00000: passed.
c3e00000: passed.
c3f00000: passed.
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 10101971) 64MB DRAM
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 63668k/64M available (996k code, 20k reserved, 848k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 8192 (order 4, 64k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 65536 (order 6, 256k)
Page cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
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 65536 bhash 65536)
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 206f6972 'rio '
Found custom animation at offset 0x99380
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
show_message("Hijack v508 by Mark Lord")
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 d0005700).
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...
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x8080
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x0000
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0xffff
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0xaaaa
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x5555
hda: Hitachi HTS541616J9AT00, ATA DISK drive
hdb: WDC WD1600BEVE-00UYT0, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: Hitachi HTS541616J9AT00, 152627MB w/7512kB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63, LBA48
hdb: WDC WD1600BEVE-00UYT0, 152627MB w/8192kB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63, LBA48
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:d7:22:07:3
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 hdb6 > hdb2 hdb3 hdb4
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 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
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
Starting player
Timezone: EST
Hijack: intercepting config.ini

hijack: removed menu entry: "Hard Disk Detection"
hijack: removed menu entry: "Serial Port Assignment"
kftpd: listening on port 21
khttpd: listening on port 80
Using non-standard cache size 772 (bonus 48Mb, adjustment 0)
player.cpp : 587:empeg-car 3.00-alpha11 2005/07/25.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1485 Jul 25 2005
Vcb: 0x4313a000
Dead temp.sensor, status=0x00
Dead temp.sensor, status=0x00

=================================

The message dead temp.sensor is curious. Is it because of the disk failure - I see that the ide data test does not read back what it wrote, or is it something more ominous?

You can make it ignore that currently playing track but you said it did play okay before so *shrug*

The mic input chip looks okay as it does get detected as an a0 revision and I think those HD test messages are also normal. Mark should be able to tell you whether its okay or not.

The temp sensor shouldn't affect it to my knowledge. The DalSemi temp sensor chip used in the empeg has two operating modes and its possible to corrupt the configuration in it so it ends up in the wrong thermostat mode. You need to solder some wires to it to actually reset the configuration as it no longer responds to the serial bus.

The "ide_data_test" messages are relevant only if they fail all the way. Which here they do not, so they can be safely ignored.

The "Dead temp.sensor" message is also harmless -- ignore it, as nothing in the empeg actually uses it for anything.

Cheers

Thank you guys for the hints. The track was "ignored" and the player booted normally. I didn't look at the FAQ because of the "dead temp.sensor" message.