Tried to hack a phatnoise in a 2000 VW... didn't work

[roto]

Hi all

I'm having some issues after attempting to hack my phatnoise, just hoping someone will be able to push me in the right direction as to a fix, or maybe point out what I was doing wrong.

I downloaded dmsutils 1.2.1 and followed the command line method as outlined here: http://wiki.phathack.com/Windows_Hack_Procedure


I ran through these steps, making sure I was careful to not have the DMS connected until the scripts told me to plug it in, and unmounting it properly after they had run.

• Ran BackupDMS.bat to backup original DMS.  Stored phtsys.tar.gz in a safe location
• Ran DMSHack.bat
• Inserted DMS in to my phatnoise and turned my stereo on

Now... at this point, it looked like it was playing music as expected, but I never heard the "hack complete".  The Phatnoise appeared to just be rebooting repeatedly.  It would start off as if it were playing a song silently, then after 30 seconds it would say "no disc" and kick me back to the radio... I would hit the CD button to go back to the phatnoise, and it would do the same thing over and over.  I did this for 15 minutes just in case this was part of the expected update process.

I removed the DMS and brought it back inside to look at the logs.  The [Phatsys]:\log folder was completely empty.  The [Phatsys]:\bootload.log contains the following:

BOOT0-1: OK
BOOT0: Successful
BOOT9: Successful
BOOTB: Successful
BOOTF: Successful
BOOT*-X: Failed

Now, I remembered reading that since VW's keep the phatnoise powered at all times, in order to boot from the modified files you may need to actually disconnect the the phatnoise and plug it back in.
I did that, then turned the stero back on.  Now, the red and green lights were flashing (one was solid, one was flashing, I don't recall which one was doing what).
Now, when I pressed the CD button on my stereo to choose the phatnoise, it would say "no changer" and immediately boot me back to the radio.  I left it like this for 15 minutes with the lights continuing to flash.  After 15 minutes, I figured something wasn't working.

I brought the DMS back inside and ran the Patchclean.bat file.  That ended with a message of "patchclean.sh: unmatched " [96]" but otherwise appeared to finish cleanly.
However, upon taking my DMS back down to the phatnoise and powering it up, it still says "no changer" on my stereo and the lights on the device flash continuously.

I see one suggested fix is to corrupt the ramdisk.sig file.  however, the instructions on the wiki suggest that should be done if the patchverify.log file shows errors later on... It looks like I'm not even getting to the patchverify point, as I have an error in my bootload.log file and nothing in my phatsys:\log folder.

I'm definitely open to trying that, however since things appear to have gone a bit sideways I'd rather solicit some advice from those more knowledgeable than I before I press on.

Some of what I'm reading suggests this might be an issue with trying to update the firmware and apply the hack at the same time.... But since I just followed the command line instructions, it shouldn't have tried to do anything with updating the firmware, should it?

Any advice is appreciated,
Thanks

[roto]

heh

I corrupted the ramdisk.sig, and it worked almost immediately.

So now I'm about to put my original DMS hard drive away in a static bag somewhere... Should I leave just leave the corrupted ramdisk.sig as is now?

[roto]

Phew.  FINALLY have everything working.

Just throwing this out there in case anyone else runs in to the same thing.  I ended up using the new GUI tool to create my replacement DMS drive, which happens to be a WD 160gb.
I tried to explore the drive with Phatnoise media manager, and it threw a bunch of weird errors.  After that, no tool I used (phatnoise media manager, phatnoise music manager, or phathack media manager) seemed to accept that the drive was properly created.

I re-did the steps to create the replacement DMS, and this time didn't touch phatnoise media manager, and just went straight to music manager.  Now it works flawlessly.  I guess that was just a weird issue with the media manager not supporting LBA48... but I don't see how it could have corrupted anything to the point where it wouldn't even work with other utilities.  Anyway, just throwing out that anecdote in the hopes that it might help someone else.


I want to throw out a massive thanks to everyone who has put in time developing and updating these tools.  It's great to see people putting their skills and knowledge to work like this, and releasing something just for the sake of helping others.

The drive in my original DMS was about 7 years old, so I knew it was just a matter of time before it croaked. Now that I'm hacked with a fresh new drive I don't have to worry about that so much