Hey there-
I just posted about my apparently-dead Phatbox in another thread, but now that I've found this forum, I thought I'd mention another ongoing minor annoyance I've experienced.
Sometimes when driving, I've had the Phatbox malfunction. It'll stop in mid-song, and the LCD display on my head unit will start scrolling through tracks quickly...21...22...23...24...25...26...27...until it either eventually finds a track to play, or else gives up with a message that says something like "check cartridge".
One odd thing I've noticed...I believe that, without exception, every time it's malfunctioned, I've been in the mountains, heading for our vacation cabin. When I go up and over the pass, it malfunctions. When I've been up in the mountains for several hours, it starts to work fine again, or if I'm only up in the mountains briefly, the Phatbox works fine again as soon as I get down to lower elevations. I'm not talking about crazy Wyoming elevations, either -- I think the pass and the cabin are somewhere around 3000 feet
I'm hypothesizing that the altitude change is making the drive malfunction. Anyone have any evidence to support this idea? I know that microdrives (the miniaturized CompactFlash-sized hard drives that were originally sold as digital camera storage, and then found their way into MP3 players like the iPod mini) came with warnings about operating them at high elevations. I was told that this was because the read/write head floats on a cushion of air, and the thinner air at higher altitudes increases the risk that the head will crash into the platter.
Has anyone else encountered problems with their Phatboxes at higher altitudes?
