Renewed interest in my Phatbox, various questions

[JSBear]

I've had my Phatbox for a LONG TIME, it has been in my Audi since 2002 or so..  Recently I purchased a 911, created a custom cable, changed to the Ferrari/Porsche firmware, and got it running fine with the Porsche HU (thanks to some generous users on this forum).

Using media manager I decided to get a fresh start, so I basically wiped my DMS within MM.  Proceeded to redo all my music and playlists etc.  All is well.

Question 1: In my Audi, I had another layer or searching, for instance, when selecting an artist, I would first select the alpha letter, than I could select artists under that letter.  I don't remember if I made an adjustment somewhere many years ago to enable this functionality, or maybe the Ferrari/Porsche firmware does not have this functionality ? 

Question 2: I have not hacked my DMS yet, but it seems I should do that ASAP, just in case my DMS fails.  I assume there are no issues using my original DMS on a hacked setup until I open up my DMS and upgrade to a larger drive ?  Just searched again, and it appears I should be fine using the orginal DMS, so I think  I'm OK here.

Question 3: I assume the DMS uses a laptop (2.5 IDE) drive ?  5400 RPM's preferred to eliminate heat ?

Question 4: When upgrading to a larger drive, What is the best process for backing up the old DMS and restoring it onto the new DMS ?  Can I used Ghost or similar ?  Do I have to redo everything ?  Any insight is appreciated.  I have seen some thread re: Acronis

I apologize in advance if these questions have been asked previously.  Tried searching but couldn't find specific answers.




 

[Terry_Kennedy]

Question 1: In my Audi, I had another layer or searching, for instance, when selecting an artist, I would first select the alpha letter, than I could select artists under that letter.  I don't remember if I made an adjustment somewhere many years ago to enable this functionality, or maybe the Ferrari/Porsche firmware does not have this functionality ? 

In the BMW firmware, you can do alpha seeks for artist mode (4) by holding the track up/down buttons. It is also possible to have alpha seeks in the album mode (2). See album_seek=alpha.

Question 2: I have not hacked my DMS yet, but it seems I should do that ASAP, just in case my DMS fails.  I assume there are no issues using my original DMS on a hacked setup until I open up my DMS and upgrade to a larger drive ?  Just searched again, and it appears I should be fine using the orginal DMS, so I think  I'm OK here.

Yup - to a hacked box, any disk drive is the same as any other, as long as all the necessary files are in the PHTSYS partition.

Question 3: I assume the DMS uses a laptop (2.5 IDE) drive ?  5400 RPM's preferred to eliminate heat ?

Yes, 2.5". Make sure you get an IDE one and not the newer SATA version. AFAIK, there are no 7200RPM 2.5" IDE drives being made any more.

Question 4: When upgrading to a larger drive, What is the best process for backing up the old DMS and restoring it onto the new DMS ?  Can I used Ghost or similar ?  Do I have to redo everything ?  Any insight is appreciated.  I have seen some thread re: Acronis

Most of the hard disk imaging partitions want to have more access to the drive than they can get via the USB cradle. They may also have problems when trying to initialize the data partition, as it is larger than the standard FAT32 formatting tools will deal with.

If you have enough space on your PC, I'd suggest using something like WinZIP (with "Include subfolders" checked) to back up the DMS and restore to the new one. You'll need to do this for each of the 2 drive letters on the DMS.

If you can get both drives attached at the same time (perhaps with one in the cradle and one connected via a 3.5" IDE adapter) you won't need free space on your PC - just do an XCOPY/S between the old and new drives.

[VorTechS]

In honesty, you shouldn't need to worry about backing up your original DMS other than the audio. 

As long as you don't use anything not designed to create a DMS cartridge to create partitions (unless you know the technical requirements for this to do so yourself), you can't really screw anything up 'system' wise.

The DMS tools will always adopt the correct procedures to ensure your DMS is kept in its 'factory' state as it doesn't touch the magic first MB.  Well, when I say doesn't touch it - when you apply the hack, it does back it up to your PC!

In fact, you can also use the 'backup' option which will allow you backup various parts of the system drive to ZIP files (which just have an odd extension to denote what part of the system is contained within it)