Audi Symphony radio sporadically fails to recognize Phatbox

[amb]

I have a 2001 Audi S4 with the factory Symphony radio, a hacked Audi phatbox with a 80GB DMS drive.  The system works fine, but occasionally will not recognize the phatbox when restarting (it will go to radio mode, and pressing the CDC button does not switch to the phatbox).

Disconnecting the cable at the back of the phatbox and then reconnecting it always "fixes" the problem.  But I don't think it's a connector or cable problem.  The system never loses connection to the phatbox while driving/playing, and the problem always occurs after the car has been turned off and then restarted later.  If it was a cable connectivity problem, then I would expect the connection to be flaky during playback as well, right?  This problem is erratic.  It can happen multiple times in a day, and then be trouble-free for weeks.

Anyone experience this problem or could offer any insight?

[amb]

Bump... really no one had experienced anything like this? 

[S80_UK]

Not here - wrong car... 

[VorTechS]

Just a thought, and don't take this the wrong way, but you are making sure you insert the cartridge fully?

I know some of the newer cartridge cases are a bit of a tight fit and need that little bit extra pushing to make sure they are making good contact.

[amb]

I always push the cartridge in as far as it would go, but I'll do it again to make sure.  If the cartridge was loose, why would the problem only occur after a restart, and would always be "fixed" by re-plugging the cable?

[VorTechS]

You're right, as I said, it was a suggestion as that's a simple thing that has always caused problems in the past.

TBH I've not heard of this problem before either and don't recall seeing anything like it.  In a way, it almost sounds like the box isn't starting up quick enough and timing out with the head unit.  It would probably be worth dropping the RC pairs onto the box and getting a log for us to trawl through to see if there is any indication there of what might be causing the problem.

[amb]

It would probably be worth dropping the RC pairs onto the box and getting a log for us to trawl through to see if there is any indication there of what might be causing the problem.

Sorry about my ignorance but what exactly does this entail?

[VorTechS]

There is a function on the DMS tools to do it, if you happen to have the latest installed.
Otherwise you can grab the rc zip file from downloads.phathack.com: http://downloads.phathack.com/bushing/rc_pairs.zip

Extract the level10 rc/rc.sig and drop them over the existing ones. This will then create a very big logfile.txt or something of similar name in PHTSYS\