Dead UnitiServes Society

I have the original chrome bumper version made on the Monday morning after the Queens 1977 Silver Jubilee celebrations. Still working thank you.

Ok - you're in

Adam Zielinski posted:

- this time I will request a new unit.

As I cannot be a full member never having owned one,  I was warned off in my virgin streamer times thanks to my buddy who had two go belly up.   I helped him with both cases,  so can I be an associate member ??    And as an associate member may I suggest you move on to either a proper grown up NAS & all the ease & flexibility that brings,  or go deep diving in the Melco pool. 

Mike - every Society needs an Associate Professor - you can have that coveted spot, if you'd like

I actually do have a proper NAS (QNAP HS-251 Silent NAS)  - been running Minimserver as a back up for quite a while now. As my US is a SSD version it needs a properly set up NAS to function. In the process of re-arranging all my files now, so that Minim can read them.

I have had a Unitiserve for the last 4 years.  It can be a bit glitchy at times, but a good old power down gets it functioning again(about 2x a year). Just had it upgraded at relatively low cost to a 2TB version and very happy with it. No NAS either, perhaps I am tempting fate!

My US failed to start after a proper power-down. We were out for two weeks on holidays so all the equipment was off... 

I'm on my second Serve and it's been rock solid. I'm already an associate professor. Am I in?

Hard drive failures hardly count.  Any hard drive can fail . . . 

Jan-Erik Nordoen posted:

I'm on my second Serve and it's been rock solid. I'm already an associate professor. Am I in?

Yes - of course

Bart posted:

Hard drive failures hardly count.  Any hard drive can fail . . . 

It's not the hard drive failures only,,,, - a failure to start counts too.

I do not qualify for membership but I am curious: has any member of the honorable Dead UnitiServes Society ever tried to install a decent OS on the US? A minimal Debian / GNU Linux, for instance, would give you a stable, reliable OS with the possibility of running MinimServer and exchanging data with other devices without having to fiddle around with proprietary interfaces. You could even try a live distribution on CD or USB stick (assuming that you can make the US boot from CD or from a stick) and revert to the original OS should your membership be endangered. Best, nbpf

I think UnitiServe is a completely closed architecture with no user access. So I wouldn't want to attempt hacking it. It's user interface is actually very good and it's a fantastic UPnP server. 

My problem is that it just refuses to 'wake' up - stuck somewhere in BIOS start-up loop.

If Mike gets the Associate Professorship, I'd like to apply for the post of Class Dunce. My first Unitiserve was completely cooked by a direct lightning strike to my phone line. Obviously, I should have disconnected it, so I can hardly hold the device, or Naim, responsible. In my defence, I was working several thousand miles away at the time, and attempts to educate my wife in the importance of unplugging stuff had, until then, been unsuccessful.

(Just returned from a 10 day holiday yesterday and fired everything up without a hitch;-) 

ChrisSU posted:

If Mike gets the Associate Professorship, I'd like to apply for the post of Class Dunce. My first Unitiserve was completely cooked by a direct lightning strike to my phone line. Obviously, I should have disconnected it, so I can hardly hold the device, or Naim, responsible. In my defence, I was working several thousand miles away at the time, and attempts to educate my wife in the importance of unplugging stuff had, until then, been unsuccessful.

(Just returned from a 10 day holiday yesterday and fired everything up without a hitch;-) 

Chris - I wouldn't go as far as appointing you a Class Dunce - you seem far too clever for that.  We need to find another, more important, post in the Society for you.

Phil Harris just confirmed they will assist the distributor in Poland in resolving the issue in anyway that the distributor requires. For now I'm soldering on with untagged WAV files from the UnitiServe's NAS via Minimserver. Have to use a 'folder view' to find anything

Adam Zielinski posted:

 For now I'm soldering on with untagged WAV files from the UnitiServe's NAS via Minimserver. Have to use a 'folder view' to find anything

Interesting.....I've never considered soldering my files on before, do they sound much better

I guess if you had stored your music as FLAC you would have been able to see it properly? Hopefully just a temporary problem. 

ChrisSU posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

 For now I'm soldering on with untagged WAV files from the UnitiServe's NAS via Minimserver. Have to use a 'folder view' to find anything

Interesting.....I've never considered soldering my files on before, do they sound much better

I guess if you had stored your music as FLAC you would have been able to see it properly? Hopefully just a temporary problem. 

Once I get my US I will have to convert everything to FLAC (promissed myself to do that the last time....)

Kiwi cat posted:

I have had a Unitiserve for the last 4 years.  It can be a bit glitchy at times, but a good old power down gets it functioning again(about 2x a year). Just had it upgraded at relatively low cost to a 2TB version and very happy with it. No NAS either, perhaps I am tempting fate!

Fate will kill your internal disk, see the thread on catastrophic disk death!

Claus

My US is nearly 5 years old and has been back to Naim 3 times. Once with a  CD stuck inside and once when it intermittently powered itself off. Both fixed under warranty. Also had a hard drive failure, so I now have a 2tb unit. Even so I still like it, apart from not being able to have artist name on Various Artists Compilations tracks

ChrisSU posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

 For now I'm soldering on with untagged WAV files from the UnitiServe's NAS via Minimserver. Have to use a 'folder view' to find anything

Interesting.....I've never considered soldering my files on before, do they sound much better

I guess if you had stored your music as FLAC you would have been able to see it properly? Hopefully just a temporary problem. 

Yes, soldered files would be interesting. At least you won't have to worry about poor connections, however if they are untagged, how do you solder them? 

(For Adam's benefit while we make fun of it, in deference to a mother tongue with different sayings, I suspect you meant soldiering on, soldier as is military people, not joining things with molten metal!)

Soldiering on is of course what I meant. I make even worse spelling mistakes in Polish.

Having said that: soldered files - could help with gapless playback

I've had mine for 3.5 yrs and its failed twice!

First time the dealer couldn't save my music and so I had to re-rip 600 cds....

Second time I was luckier and the dealer transferred my music to a new hd and i upgraded to 2Gb to get the download folder. I then got a Nas and Steve Harris set it up for me!

US needs to be updated by Naim to improve its reliability!!!

CSI_Basel posted:

 

US needs to be updated by Naim to improve its reliability!!!

Most definitely!

I had my PSU fail early on, but then Naim changed the PSU for all units, and mine was under warranty and was replaced, so presumably this is no longer an issue anyway.

Then I had my Hard Drive fail after 3 1/2 years, but all Hard Drives fail some time (just like my NAS HD did last year) so I wouldnt say that was an unusual event, perhaps should have lasted longer, but it was replaced under warranty anyway.

I know some have had issues but I would say that mine has been rock solid, no reliability issues at all, and in case of any issues my dealer & Naim have sorted it out very quickly. No complaints from my side!

Chrish - you still qualify for the membership of our Society. 

I think we all like our UnitServe and what it does. I'm a great advocate of it.

It annoys me when things so expensive fail, though

Does this also apply to (former) HDX owners? Mine went broke 2 times: first the CD tray had 'a will of it's own' and needed replacement. Earlier this year my HDX wouldn't start after an unexpected power outage ... several capacitors needed replacement, it also appeared that one of the hard drives failed ...