My old BMW phatbox died. So I got a VW box from ebay, used my old BMW cable and Blitzsafe adapter, put the BMW firmware in it and put it in the car. The music plays fine but I have a very weird problem. Basically I am unable to control the music from the headunit. For example, when I push 'track forward', the music pauses for a moment, the number on the displays advances but the same song keeps playing. When I hit '4' it prompts 'now browsing genres' but I am unable to select the next genre, again the music just briefly pauses and then continues.
Now here is the totally weird thing: when I select 'random' on the menu, I actually can forward to other songs! As soon as I select one of the numbers other than 1 (for browsing by genre, artist, etc.), random turns off and I am back to being unable to control anything.
I have reflashed the firmware multiple times, tried another DMS but nothing seems to fix it. Anybody has any suggestions?
That's really weird. I was under the impression that any Phatbox unit would work in the BMW if the BMW cable, the Blitzsafe, and the BMW firmware is used. I'll wait for an answer on this before I attempt exactly the same thing you've attempted. I have a dead BMW Phatbox and I have a VW Phatbox that I bought on Ebay that I planned to put in the X5.
It gets even weirder. After spending half my Sunday afternoon playing around with it, I finally downgraded the firmware. Version 8 had the same issue but version 7 worked! Very strange. I'd still like to use version 9 as 7 has some issues. Anyone has any clue what's going on here?
Got mine working over the weekend. I used firmware version 8.0 and it seems to behave normally.