At approximately 6:45 am this morning I plugged in my new 80GB cartridge into my VW Phatbox, closed the trunk, got into the driver's seat and turned on my headunit. This was the third such attempt this morning and I fully expected to see the dreaded "CD-X No Magazine" message. I was resigned to trying the Genesis Method as a my next step if the latest thing didn't work. (I had deleted the forceupdate file and renamed the empty boot.log.)
But perhaps I should have known that the stunningly beautiful pink clouds as the sun started to rise was an omen of good things.
Because music started to play!!
Hopefully I didn't wake any of the neighbors as I whooped and yelled for joy!! Not that I care... they wouldn't understand!!
So in an effort to give back to this most totally awesome of forums, I will describe the steps I followed along with the troubles I encountered and how I overcame them. Because it is these kinds of threads posted by others that allowed me to perform this hack without actually having to asking ANY questions once I started!! 8-)
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1. Started by purchasing all the parts required to build a new DMS listed in the DIY DMS thread:
http://forum.phathack.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=11287707172. Then ordered an 80GB Toshiba drive from NewEgg.
3. Assembled all per the DMS Drive Swap Wiki:
http://wiki.phathack.com/DMS_drive_swap4. Create a boot floppy and proceeded to hack my original DMS using the DMS Hack and Repair CD Wiki:
http://wiki.phathack.com/DMS_Hack_and_Repair_CD5. When I inserted the hacked DMS into my Phatbox and turned on the head unit, I saw the elapsed time counter that was left over from the song I had been playing earlier in the day continue for about 30 sec then stop and the dreaded "CD-X No Magazine" message appeared.
6. Brought disk back to PC and renamed ramdisk.sig to ramdisk.bak, copied phatd.sig to desktop, renamed it to ramdisk.sig and copied back into DMS. Tried again with the DMS and was rewarded with the message about unlocking my Phatbox. Had to go get dinner at this point and again listened to the message about unlocking the Phatbox. Later deleted the appropriate mp3 to get rid of that.
7. When ready to proceed with the new DMS, I basically started over because I wasn't sure if I could skip any steps with the system now unlocked. So I did the whole thing again, this time continuing on with the steps in the DMS Hack and Repair Wiki.
8. Now I took both DMS out to the car to confirm the old one still worked and to test the new one. The old one DID still work and the new one didn't!! This time I tested both DMS's with the DMS Dr with both failing the Ststem Files Test. "Fail: MD5 checksum failed for M:\aadec.sig". Followed recommended link to website and followed recommendation to update the firmware. Did this for both DMS. And decided to wait till morning to proceed.
9. Inserted old DMS with new firmware into Phatbox and waited while the DMS programmed the Phatbox. Turned on the headunit and confirmed the old DMS still worked.
10. Now tried the new one and still had the dreaded "No magazine"....
Returned to the PC and deleted "forceupdate" files and renamed that "bootload.log" to "bootload.bak.log". Also EMPTIED the Recycle Bin!! It occurred to me that files aren't really deleted until this is done.
11. Inserted the DMS into the Phatbox expecting nothing, and was greeted by music!! Woo Hoo!!
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Who knows if this process could have been streamlined any or which of the two things I did in step 10 that worked.
But it did and now I can started copying all of my music, which I have converted to .flac, over to the DMS.
Hopefully this will help someone else with this process. It ain't hard, but it ain't easy. It just takes patience.
Just remember... that which does not kill you makes you stronger!!
AJ 8-)
