Audi Symphony radio sporadically fails to recognize Phatbox

[amb]

I have a 2001 Audi S4 with the factory Symphony radio, a hacked Audi phatbox with a 80GB DMS drive.  The system works fine, but occasionally will not recognize the phatbox when restarting (it will go to radio mode, and pressing the CDC button does not switch to the phatbox).

Disconnecting the cable at the back of the phatbox and then reconnecting it always "fixes" the problem.  But I don't think it's a connector or cable problem.  The system never loses connection to the phatbox while driving/playing, and the problem always occurs after the car has been turned off and then restarted later.  If it was a cable connectivity problem, then I would expect the connection to be flaky during playback as well, right?  This problem is erratic.  It can happen multiple times in a day, and then be trouble-free for weeks.

Anyone experience this problem or could offer any insight?

[amb]

Bump... really no one had experienced anything like this? 

[S80_UK]

Not here - wrong car... 

[VorTechS]

Just a thought, and don't take this the wrong way, but you are making sure you insert the cartridge fully?

I know some of the newer cartridge cases are a bit of a tight fit and need that little bit extra pushing to make sure they are making good contact.

[amb]

I always push the cartridge in as far as it would go, but I'll do it again to make sure.  If the cartridge was loose, why would the problem only occur after a restart, and would always be "fixed" by re-plugging the cable?

[VorTechS]

You're right, as I said, it was a suggestion as that's a simple thing that has always caused problems in the past.

TBH I've not heard of this problem before either and don't recall seeing anything like it.  In a way, it almost sounds like the box isn't starting up quick enough and timing out with the head unit.  It would probably be worth dropping the RC pairs onto the box and getting a log for us to trawl through to see if there is any indication there of what might be causing the problem.

[amb]

It would probably be worth dropping the RC pairs onto the box and getting a log for us to trawl through to see if there is any indication there of what might be causing the problem.

Sorry about my ignorance but what exactly does this entail?

[VorTechS]

There is a function on the DMS tools to do it, if you happen to have the latest installed.
Otherwise you can grab the rc zip file from downloads.phathack.com: http://downloads.phathack.com/bushing/rc_pairs.zip

Extract the level10 rc/rc.sig and drop them over the existing ones. This will then create a very big logfile.txt or something of similar name in PHTSYS\

[amb]

It's been 3 years but this problem has plagued my Phatbox with no solution yet.

One thing I noticed, however, is that the problem happens frequently in the summer when the weather is warm.  It rarely happens in the winter.  This seems to imply a temperature-dependent hardware issue.  Is something overheating?  What might it be?  And why doesn't the problem occur any time while the unit is on and playing, but only happens when I come back to the car after it has been off and parked for a while (and this could be in the evening when it's cool again)?  When the problem happens, I notice that both the red and green LEDs on the Phatbox front panel are on solid.  It stays frozen that way until I disconnect and reconnect the cable.

Anyone else run into temperature-related issues with the Phatbox?  Or have any ideas what is wrong with mine?

[VorTechS]

What drive do you have inside your DMS?

The only temperature related problems I have ever been aware of, have been theoretical ones where using a 7200rpm drive might cause some additional heating that the box might not like.

That I recall, the official drives were 5400rpm.

[amb]

It's a Western Digital WD3200BEVE (320GB PATA, 5400 rpm).

[VorTechS]

Well, it's unlikely to be that then!

I know we are talking about issues with the DMS tools privately, and that the PHTDTA partition is too big, could it be that the box is somehow reading this and locking up trying to access the non-existent sector(s)?

That might explain the solid green (drive access) light?

[amb]

I don't think it's the partition size issue, because that woudn't be temperature-dependent!
Also, if I recall correctly, the FAT32 filesystem on that PHTDTA partition was created entirely within the disk boundary (even though the partition itself isn't).

[VorTechS]

Just throwing it out there, as there is a small chance the issue may not be temperature related

I guess it would all depend on just what the Phatnoise guys did with disk access stuff, and if their software is anything to go by it would all be pretty low-level stuff, so I wouldn't rule it out entirely.

After Monday we might know for sure!