The wost has happened... STOLEN!

So after a year long love affair with my empeg, i walk out to my car this morning to the worst thing that could possibly happen... my beloved 20 gig empeg was gone! the bastards had to destroy my gear shift to get to it too...

ugh...

if anyone has an extra for sale, i can't go back to cd's....

~jason

Greetings!

Please send email to support with the serial number. Sorry to hear about your loss!!!

will do paul... i'll send that off as soon as i get home from work. thanks for the reminder.

Why not post the serial # here as well? I for one have been keeping a hawk's eye on what's for sale on eBay and the board, should I decided that money meant for other toys would be well spent on a 2nd. I'd be happy to query new sellers on eBay for the serial # of the player and other such details.

a quick update: i got together all my paperwork/receipts/etc for the insurance claim, and to post the serial number here. as i pull out this morning on my way to work, i see my precious empeg on the street corner about a block away from my house. looks like someone couldn't figure out how to get the cd's into it or something, and decided to smash it instead. the unit also got stormed on last night, but i'm going to give it some love and see if anything about the unit is salvageable. i will also still make the insurance claim, of course, so i can continue my love affair with this gadget.

Wow, a discarded Empeg sitting on the street corner... THAT's a new one!

Hope you can breathe some life back into it, but after being smashed and left out in a rainstorm, I think you might as easily create Frankenstein's monster...

Well, the rainstorm couldn't do a lot of damage to an unconnected empeg. Water is only damaging it with power connected.
That it was smashed on the other hand is definitively worse.

cu,
sven.

PS: Jason, good luck reviving it.

Greetings!

You are very lucky to get it back. There is still the car damage, and (from the sound of "smashed") quite a bit of repair on the empeg itself, but you might be able to salvage something...

One interesting point, though - I hope you handled it carefully to try and get fingerprints / get the police involved. Since it was found so close to home, that means (assuming they stole it from your car parked at home), they did not take much time to study or work with the unit. If they were in a car, it would have only been seconds; on foot, maybe a minute or so. In any case, the thieves are likely still in your neighborhood.

Yeah, tell me all you want about water not damaging it, but I won't be putting my empeg in the dishwasher anytime soon...

The whores on the street corners round here come for about a tenth the price of an Empeg, and a tenth the enjoyment.

Sincerely hope you get it working, couldn't do without mine!

As prompted by an e-mail received privately, no I don't know from personal experience, it was just a joke!

i would seriously snap if what you described happened to me. snnnnnap i tell you.

hehehe.. then make sure you take your empegs in at night. i had "it would never happen to me" syndrome. when i get another one, i'll buy a nice hardshell case with a lock, and take it with me whenever possible.

Let me know what is damaged and I'll provide a repair quote.

Hi, i talked to tony lastnight, from the group buy thread. I'm waiting for my unit. People have already stated that they received their units its perfect condition. He said he has 6 more empegs left for sale. Just thought i would toss this into the thread. They are $520/each for a 10gb. You could switch your hard drive, or maybe David would do it so you wouldn't void your warranty.

This is ever so sad, but at least you got your empeg back. It seems that those damn thieves don’t have a clue on how priceless these units are. Ever since I got my mark 1, then the mark2a, I’ve never let it out of my sight. Expect for a quick trip across the pond.

i've had my apline for over a year now and i bring the face with me every night. im actually on my way to buy a pelican 1400 and it will have enough room for the alpine faceplate too ;P

"i'll buy a nice hardshell case with a lock"

And don't forget a car alarm and a shotgun.

No, the shotgun would be too quick, I'd like to see the thief suffer. I heard a story about a guy who caught a thief breaking into his car. He kicked seven shades of sh*t out of the guy and left him tied to a lamppost in the center of town with a sign around his neck saying 'I'm a car thief, please kick me', apparently they had CCTV footage of almost every other passer by putting the boot in! I would love to have seen that!

/me wants to see that video.

/me too!

My last car was broken into 3 times. They never found him. But recently someone was arrested breaking into a car on my street. Maybe his prints will match up with the screwdriver left behind in my car when the thief was scared away.

Give 'em the chair, that's what I say!

I would settle for the old "take away the instrument of the crime" approach. In this case, cut off his hands, and make it illegal for him to have any kind of prosthetic.

This is why I'm not a politician!

Neither am I. I just prefer the guilty to be able to think about what they've done while they suffer. In my case I lost the faceplate to my stereo at the time, a portable cd player I was using, and a really big binder full of CDs (each one was a burned copy of the original, safely tucked away in my house). The officer, however, did not take note of that last tidbit, and valued my loss at about $1000. So if they find the guy, I might get my money. But it's been long enough that I'd settle for jail time.

I must know... does it work? were you able to give it enough TLC to get any life from it? Was it a little smashed or a lot smashed? Possibly the guys at support could repair it if it were just a little smashed. Please let us know.

here's the damage:

http://www.krack.org/temp/empeg1.jpg
http://www.krack.org/temp/empeg2.jpg
http://www.krack.org/temp/empeg3.jpg
http://www.krack.org/temp/empeg4.jpg

with it being smashed and rained on, should i try to plug it in to see if it still works?

thanks!

That's really sad, I hope you manage to do something about getting it going again. If I caught the b***ard who did that I'd give him the kicking of a lifetime. On a positive side, it doesn't look like connectors have been damaged, maybe the motherboard is intact. What does the front look like? Good luck with getting it fixed

i agree about kicking the poop out of the bastard that did this. the front looks fine, surprisingly. no cracks in the faceplate or anything. so what's the vote, should i plug it in?

I would take the top off first and check to see if there is anything loose in there or metal pieces laying on the mainboard.

I'd open it up first... make sure it's all dry and clean it out a little. Check if the mobo is in tact and the connectors are on... that sort of thing. Wow. You're lucky the facia wasn't smashed! Maybe with some metal work it could be back to working order...

wow. It looks like it was run over. It would take a LOT of weight to bend the metal like that... it doesn't look like a hammer was taken to it or anything. Weird.

I would at least pull the faceplate and see if the VFD is shattered. If you are brave, open the case and make sure the dented part of the case is not shorting anything.... Does it rattle?

I would see if you can get the lid off, and check for obvious board damage. Remove the drive tray, the front board, and see if the ribbon cables are torn, and check the VFD for cracks. With the sort of impact those pictures show there may have been internal injuries

The shot of the back shows a pin bent on the ethernet connector, and I would bend it away from the case before attempting to power it up. See if the phono connectors have broken away from the main board, as well as the serial connector.

Assuming everything checks out, you could give it a shot. After all, it's unlikely to get any worse! Considering the way the lid is bent, the drive(s) may be squashed. If not, they may well have survived, they're remarkably shock-tolerant.

It looks like someone jumped up and down on it. Odd people.

pca

Once you've checked there's nothing loose I suppose there's nothing to be lost by firing it up. Hey, if it does work, there's testement to Hugo and the gangs engineering skills, I can't think of much kit at work that would take a kicking like that and carry on working (even the outside broadcast gear!).

You never know, all you might need is a new case, which I'm sure David could sort you out with, I'd imagine there are a few thoroughly dead units with perfectly good cases.

Also, if it's gotten damp, dry it thoroughly. If there's dirt inside, it might be a good idea to wash it out with some isopropyl alcohol, then dry it off again, just in case there are some metal filings floating around.

pca

It looks fairly salvageable. I have plenty of spare sets of metalwork here.

If you don't want to risk powering it up, then you can send the unit in as it is and I'll take care of it.

Yep, I agree - if the main board isn't cracked in two (it looks like someone has driven over it - you can't bend 1mm stainless steel like that with human pressure alone) then make sure it's really dry and there are no loose bits of metal & try powering it up.

If you're at all nervous though, send it back in. As David says, we have spare metalwork and can rehouse it & sort most problems out short of a motherboard in pieces!

Hugo

Looks like there's a footprint on this photo - bastards.

Um, I wouldn't apply power to it until I was sure there was nothing broken or shorted on the inside. From the looks of it, the connections on the back (serial, ethernet, etc) were stressed and there might be broken traces as a result. Also the disk drive tray might have been driven into the system board or the display board. So don't apply power unless you completely dismantle it and check everything carefully.

Honestly, I'd just send it to David and have him look at it without even applying power...

I'd say it's probably likely that they stole it quickly, and, then, when they got it in the car to look at it, realized that they couldn't do anything with it and threw it out the window. Then someone else ran over it. Perhaps a few cars later, someone decided to remove it from the pavement and throw it over onto the shoulder. Who knows when the footprint happened. It could easily just have been a jogger.

On a related note, thieves are stupid. One day, years ago, a couple of officemates got their cars broken into on the same day (they were in the same lot). One of them had a pull-out unit that wasn't stolen because the thief tried to get it out with a prybar and managed to wedge it in so that it was unremovable. He also stole a bunch of CD cases with no CDs in them (because they were all in the CD changer cartridges, lying right there on the seat). The other friend was driving a Jeep CJ with the plastic doors/roof. I forget what he'd gotten stolen from him, but in order to get to it, the thief sliced through the plastic window. Instead of just unzipping it.

Man that is one thing that REALLY ticks me off..... I would like to make the idiots face that stole it look like the player does now, with footprints and all. I am so sorry to see and read about what happend to you. I just hope that it didnt cause too much internal damage.

Yeah, definitely follow Patrick's advice before even thinking about applying power. But from the photo's it appears salvageable - most of the damage appears to be at the top and rear of the unit, which is definitely the 'better' side for the damage to be, from the repair point of view. Looking at the photos, I don't think that the hard drives have been squished, so the question remains as to whether the motherboard or the display board got damaged. The metal work at the front still looks square to me, so assuming that there is still clearance between the metalwork and the display pcb board, and the display itself is still intact (no cracks, fill nipple still there), then the display should be ok. That leaves the motherboard which may have been stressed at the connectors...I think this probably depends on whether there was an end-on impact to them more than anything. I'm kinda curious as to why one contact from the LAN connector got pulled out. Screwdriver?

David... i'm just going to send it to you for an estimate, instead of potentially damaging the unit even more. i'll email you privately for shipping instructions and such... thanks. you all are the greatest!

David's offer is a tough one to turn down

Maybe you could send it to forensics to identify the boot print. It works on 'CSI'.

should i try to plug it in to see if it still works?

I'd be afraid that all that warping of the case woukl make it short against something. Perhaps you could take it out of the case? or at least open it to see whether the main PCB is obviously wrecked. NB this is not official sonicblue advice!

Peter

Just getting the screen fixed can cost you $300. Maybe it'll be cheaper to buy one?

So does being run over by a car void the warranty? :/

As we keep pointing out, a large chunk of that cost is for two lots of next day shipping across the atlantic. If there are several things that need to be fixed, you still only pay the shipping once!

Rob

Thanks for pointing that out Rob. I never meant to imply that the fee's were too much. I still put everything in the perspective of the RioCar being a $1000+ product. I had read that the bulk of that fee was for shipping, yet I imagine the other costs might add up too.

That said, something seems very appropriate in sending the unit back to Cambridge, back home so to speak, to "meet it's makers" as the saying goes.

I saw the damage first hand last night.. sad.

Needless to say, mine is sitting on my desk all safe..

O the humanity! It feels like a dear friend has been crippled.

Calvin

Any news on the patient?

i'm waiting on an email from david with shipping instructions, then my baby's going back home to the hospital. i'll keep everyone updated as i receive information.

looks like my baby is salvageable. david broke it open and sent me back this info:

"I have just dismantled your player. Most of the hardware seems to be fine - the damage was just cosmetic.

The VFD narrowly escaped damage - the photo attached shows that the edge of the glass was cracked, but the delicate fill nipple remains intact.

The IR on the player doesn't seem to be working. I will need to do some more tests and will let you know the cost on this once I have discovered what is wrong."

here's a shot of the narrow escape on the VFD:
http://www.krack.org/temp/IMG_0959.JPG

We should make a little Purple Heart medal for your player!

Mmmm... delicate fill nipples...

Seriously though, you are one lucky son of a gun. Heartfelt congratulations on being able to keep your baby. It's always sad to see an empegcar go out of circulation for any reason, but especially when it involves theft or attempted theft.

That's great news! I hope the repairs don't cost a bomb. I bet you never leave it in the car on its own again...

We should make a little Purple Heart medal for your player!

LOL. It does sound like it deserves something though for what the poor thing went through. Glad to hear that it will be ok.

to finish this old thread off, after some slacking on my part, the empeg has safely arrived back from it's birthplace back home, and into the loving arms of it's owner (me). total cost for repairs on the unit were 65 pounds. shipping was 75 pounds. total was a little over $200 US. well worth it, IMHO, and it works better than ever. thanks to david and all the empeg guys. these gadgets are my favorite things in the world.

on a side note, i bought one of ttony's 10 gig empegs for sale on this board when mine was swiped and i thought i had no other choice. it's now for sale if anyone wants it. in perfect condition with all accessories. i paid $515, and i'll sell for $500 + shipping. if i get no answers, it'll probably go up on ebay this weekend.

thanks for everyone's support. it's wonderful to see and hear it back in my car. now i need a bigger hard drive and a nice case.

Ah, congratulations on getting your baby back. This is one of those "happy ending" stories I like so much. Hats off to David and anyone else involved in the recovery.

The other friend was driving a Jeep CJ with the plastic doors/roof. I forget what he'd gotten stolen from him, but in order to get to it, the thief sliced through the plastic window. Instead of just unzipping it.

I had a window punched out so a thief could steal the 2 floppies with (original) Railroad Tycoon on it. I replaced it for $30 (it wasn't mine.)

Luckily, the door was already unlocked, so he could have just opened it and taken it.

Do ya still have the 10 gig? If so email me