DMS 80GB issues

[Glyn]

Hi there,

Had my Phatnoise Phatbox in my 2001 Audi S8 for a few years now with @4500 songs and it has performed as expected.

As my iTunes collection has swollen to over 9000 songs I figured it was time to reload the DMS...here's where the pain began.

Using PMM (Media Manager) after a couple of thousand songs had been transferred the DMS would drop off the system and I would get a requester telling me that another program had accessed or closed the port or something similar...I don't recall now.

Now what I should have done was to reboot the PC and try again but we all know sometimes the easiest options are the ones we forget about...

So in the absence of any support whatsoever from Phatnoise (I mean they have even removed existing resources...remind me never to purchase any of their products again ) I downloaded PhatHack DMS Tools and read the Word document.

Still not knowing what I was doing I *think* I managed to 'Create a new DMS' or maybe run the Hack Wizard but TBH I am not really sure...is there a way of telling?

All I know is after I rebooted my PC I was able to transfer all 9200+ songs from PMM to the DMS in one hit and then Save & Eject the DMS cartridge.

So far...so good....until I inserted it into my car.

The green/red LED's seemed to do their stuff and when I checked the RNS-E I got the usual numeric track listing. However nothing would play and when I tried to select Disc 1-6 for Playlist, Artist etc it would not work. Even selecting Disc 6 to get the usual voice setup nothing would happen.

After a while Discs 1-6 would ghost out?

I removed the DMS and plugged it back into the cradle but for some reason even the red LED would not come on. To all intents & purposes it seemed dead.

Later that day I plugged it back in and as if by magic the red LED came on.

I loaded PMM and could see all of my songs so it looked OK.

I decided to run DMS Doctor where it succeeded in passing the Detecting DMS & Verifying DMS Filesystem is FAT 32 but then failed on Checking for \DataMount & Checking for System Files before passing the Checking for Profile & Playlists.

Looking at the DMS using Windows Explorer I can clearly see both PHTSYS (with System Volume Information, Phatbox.ini & Phatman.ini) along with PHTDATA showing the expected Album Art, Nested Music folders containing my music, Preloaded, Profiles & TTS folders with 8 or so files on the root.

First thought was maybe the car-specific headunit files got deleted when I *think* I formatted the DMS using Phathack DMS Tools so going now to Phatnoise Music Manager I clicked Device, Phatnoise DMS and got the prompt 'PMM has detected an unitialized DMS'

Clicking OK to to configure DMS runs a wizard that grinds to a halt when it tries to access the Internet to download the Headunit/vehicle specific files from Phatnoise...thanks again Phatnoise...

Clicking Hardware Options from within PMM tells me 'Not currently setup for any headunit'

So..where do I go now?

Desperately looking for a way to recover my DMS without deleting 9000+ songs but would of course be prepared to lose them if it was the only way to get my DMS back & recognised properly and then worry about putting all of my music back once more.

Strange thing is that both Music Manager & Media Manager recognise the songs on the DMS along with WIndows Explorer...it's just that it won't work in the car and DMS Doctor & PMM tell me there is a problem with it...

Any kind soul been down this road before that could point me in the right direction please?

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[Glyn]

OK...self-update to this problem.

After digging around in Phatnoise Media Manager (instead of Music Manager) I found the option where I was able to reload the Audi firmware onto the DMS cartridge and PMM now reports the correct Audi 7.02 firmware as loaded onto the cartridge so things are at least looking a little better.

There is a lot more content in the PHTSYS partition which now shows extra Data, Images & TTS folders in addition to the original System Volume Information and a total of 58 files instead of just the original two Phatbox.ini & Phatman.ini

Looks like I might have been a little hasty in condemning Phatnoise for the headunit files not being available in Music Manager...

DMS Doctor, although advising the DMS cartridge has now successfully passed \DataMount still throws a failed against 'Checking for System Files' giving the result Fail: Could not find system file I:\<DOCTYPE htmlPUBLIC"-

Putting the cartridge into the Phatbox in the car shows the LED's slowly flashing for a few seconds followed by minutes of fast flickering of what looks like the green LED (although the red LED also looks like it might be flashing but it might be light bleed from the adjacent green LED) but then after a short time-out the cycle repeats and no CD's show up on the head unit.

Any idea of how I might be able to check which data files might be missing and if so how to put them back please assuming this is the problem?

Also still looking for a way to see if I had actually 'hacked' my DMS cartridge or it is still 'original' and what advantages (and disadvantages) I might get from using the Phathack DMS Tools to 'hack' my DMS cartridge?

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[VorTechS]

AFAIK, it's not possible to use PhatNoise Media Manager to update to the latest firmware as their servers are no longer online and the person that owns this site, now controls the domain name used for the firmware update process.

If you have managed to update your firmware through the application then

a) wow
b) Be more patient

the faster light flickering is indicative of the PhatBox performing a flash update which can take anywhere between 7 and 15 minutes (even up to 30 minutes as I've seen before).

The DMS Doctor is mostly useless.

With the DMS tools, it is important that you don't run the Hack Wizard and a firmware update at the same time - as the PhatBox will not boot from this scenario.  I don't think this is what you are seeing though.

Once you have your DMS up and running again, using the DMS Tools will allow you to hack your PhatBox so that any harddrive can be used in place of the original one - giving you up to at least 320GB of drive space available.  (It's now possible to get 500GB drives, but I doubt anyone has tried one yet), presuming you haven't already hacked it.

Steps forward (if patience does not prove to be the resolution to your problem):

1) Use the DMS Tools to in 'Tools' mode
2) Select the version of firmware you KNOW was on the box. If you are not sure, stick with the latest version.
3) Ensure the option 'Install non-hacked' firmware is checked (this option should only be used when you have a hacked box)
4) Ensure the option 'Reflash box' is checked (if you are updating to a newer version of firmware)
5) 'Repair DMS (PHTSYS)'

Stick the DMS back in the box, give it plenty of time to flash the firmware (if thats the option you choose - remember 15 to 30 minutes, you should see the box reboot itself when both lights go out)

If after this time things still aren't working, then make a note of any light sequence and pop back in and we'll take things from there.