My riovolt sp90 died on me today and it went out of warranty 3 weeks ago =(. This is a long shot but maybe someone on here knows how to fix it,any help would be greatly appreciated. It starts to boot up with the little dancing people on the bottom of the LCD like always but goes no further. Also, a straight, thin black line is present at the top of the screen. Any ides anyone?

I don't know what the symptoms would be with riovolt, but THE most common problem with CD players
(which would include CD/mp3) is a dirty lens. Clean gently with a Q-tip (or sponge-tip sold in electronic
supply store) moistened with rubbing alchohol or lens cleaning fluid (I think that's alchohol with a little detergent)

The other thing with firmware upgradeable players is if you only got partway through an update things can get
pretty screwed up.

Thanks for the tip donP. I tried the lens cleaning to no success. As far as the firmware upgrade goes, I don't believe my model has the ability to do so. It's the strangest thing, It was working on the way to work one day, I then shut the car off and go to work and when i come back out 8 hours later it won't work. The Rio Tech support (which sucks) told me that it has become corrupted. It is beyond me how it became corrupted.

The Rio SP-90 is actually firmware upgradable, but Rio will not tell you so.

Since it seems it has become "corrupted", it sounds like the firmware is what has become "corrupted".

Perhaps searching for the "trick" to convert your Rio SP-90 to a iRiver iMP-100 (except for the backlight, that's the only real physical difference between them) would be useful. You should be able to overwrite the now corrupt firmware with a working one.

Added bonus of it is that your SP-90 will after that officially be an iMP-100, and you can keep using iRiver's firmware updates without modifications.

My girlfriend has a Rio SP-90 that I bought for her, and it received the iMP-100 conversion treatment about 2 hours after being bought... Working flawlessly since then.

Good luck.

Well, RioVolt sp90 CAN be firmware upgraded doing a simple trick. I don't remember the details, do a Google search or ask at http://msg.mp3.com/hardware/listnews/?cp=hw_main

Edit: Ugh... Kblood was faster than me...

hmmm. I have Rio Volt SP100. I just checked iRiver International site and you are right Kblood, the iRiver iMP-100 looks just like it. However, on Rio's site, there is an upgrade for SP-100's firmware. It is dated 6-13-2001 . iRiver's (iMP-100) is dated Feb 03, 2003.

Update: I just looked at the RiVolt's Firmware txt file. They say "Copy the file IMP-100.HEX to the root of a CD" . I guess I will use the iMP-100 firmware then!

@ibm2080: Go ahead and do it. But it will not work directly. The trick is basically getting a Hex editor and modifying the first bytes of the firmware file before burning it onto a CD-R(W). However, I will not give the details here.

Google for it.

There is a very nice FAQ out there...

@ Kblood: Yup, found it. Thx!

Thx a lot Kblood, I wouldn't have thought of searching with these terms.

I also googled "hex editor" and came out with a freeware. Long live freeware. It was the first result too. Less than a MB and does not mess with the registery. How about that? Well, I love this hex editor so much (as if I edit text in hex that much, actually it is my first time) I want to share it with everybody. Very easy to use too.

Glad I could help.

OT: For more high quality freeware, go here:
PricelessWare
XVI32 should be there, I think

edit: oops, no, it isn´t... FrHed is, though. Both very good anyway.

Still, thx a lot for the link. I just browsed it briefly, and it is an impressive list! It will be in my Favorites/Bookmarks for ever .

I can't upgrade the firmware for my rio, the disc won't even spin up.

I don't know how portables are driven, but I have a Sony full size CD player with a stretched drive belt.
that would have been a 1 hour minimum labor charge to fix (US$50+?) but was under $2 for the part plus my time.

I was told $100 for repair which is $20 more than I paid for the thing over a year ago. $90 for a refurbished one. I can go to best buy right now and get the same one for $60 without rebates lol.

Well, sorry to read that there was no easy-cheap solution.

Since you are at it, you might want to look at getting the iRiver iMP-150. I have that one, and it´s a lot nicer than the SP-90. It should be around the same price range. I actually found it cheaper than the SP-90 at the time!

Good luck.

Actually, iRiver and RioVolt players (which is almost the same) die because of the resume feature.
Let me explain. When you power off the player AND in the beginning of every song the player stores into it's flash memory (where also the firmware is) the song and the position, so it could be able to resume from that position later. If the power supply fails at that point (weak baterries etc.) the firmware becomes corrupted. Sometimes, it's not so much corrupted, and you can fix it by re-flashing it. But sometimes the firmware becames so much corrupted, that the disc even doesn't want to spin. So, the player is gone forever.
The prevention is to turn off "resume" function, before your player gets corrupted.
These players are known to be the best (I own RioVolt iMP 100), but this is their weakness.

Regarding RioVolt firmware upgrades:
I guess that there will be no more upgrades for RioVolt owners, because the company does not exist anymore. (AFAIK)

Kblood, now that your girlfriend's iMP-90 thinks itself as iMP-100, you can upgrade it with Iriver's iMP-100 firmware (the RioVolt iMP-100 and iRiver iMP-100 are actually THE SAME players). It is much more recent and contains a lot of useful features. My own RioVolt iMP-100 is frequently updated with iRiver iMP-100 firmware.

Rio is still in business, just under a different parent company.
I still wouldn't expect any more updates from them.. the "latest" firmware for mine
was in 2001, and the documentation still says diamond mulimedia, which was the
parent company before sonicblue.

RioVolt´s are not "iMP" but "SP"...

But of course my girlfriend´s SP-90 is being regularly upgraded with the iMP-100´s firmware...
Just as often as my iMP-150 is upgraded...

So rest assured... I follow my own advice until the end...

That said, I have to admit that lately I have been a bit lazy about the upgrades... Got kind of disappointed after the wait for Ogg... I should upgrade both players one of these days...

I just upgraded my RioVolt SP-100 FW. I am very happy about this.

I read the faq that Kblood talked about and in there it talked more about hacking the SP-90 than SP-100. I checked out RioVolt's website and the latest FW (dated 2001 ) and used a hex editor just to find that it was not hacked. I thought to myself I am missing something, it can't be that ez [not having to hack the FW, and just using the iRiver one as is], but I wanted to be sure. I can care less about a CDR if I can be sure of how things work, I am a freak that way. I would have sacrificed a few CDRs for the sake of knowing which combination was successful. [1. hacking and renaming the iRiver FW to SP-100.HEX 2. just hacking it 3. just renaming it 4. not changing anything]. I opted for the last option first. It was the easiest . It worked B) saving me a few CDRs

Conclusion: if you have RioVolt SP-100 and did not upgrade to a newer FW EVER (my case), you do not need anything special. Just download the iRiver iMP-100 FW and follow the instructions just as if you had an iMP-100 (which I gess that is what you have after all, just given another name).

Ok Ok, sorry, It's my fault - I didn't read you post carefully, and I was willing to help...

"iRiver is the Korean company the developed the RioVolt. The iRiver is available in Korea only and the RioVolt is being sold in the US, under the Rio Name. "

That's why I'm thinking for RioVolt (SP-100 ) as for an iMP-100. Sorry.

...and, speaking for RioVolt, firmware, upgrades, converting from RioVolt to iRiver, etc., I can share the good news: today iRiver released new firmware for their iMP series, including iMP-100 (aka RioVolt SP-100 ).

Thanks so much for the help everyone.