Question...

[FooserPaul]

I have an '03 Jetta and had my unit installed when I purchased the car. ALl was good for the first 2 years then the cartridge took a wack and the HDD has issues.

I opened the unit and replaced the drive w/a new 200GB HDD and used the boot cd, alt f2 created and formatted the new partitions.

I loaded up the PhatNiose manager it installed some stuff, I loaded up music and put in in the car...

Green light blinks a few times slow, then blinks faster and.... nothing else :-(

Where did I go wrong?

[markbowen]

A 200GB hard drive???  You mean a 20GB hard drive?

You created and formatted the new partitions, but did you first copy the drive signature from the original DMS?

[FooserPaul]

Yes I ment 20GB :-)

The old HDD is dead :-(

[markbowen]

Are you sure the old HDD is completely dead?  Can you try to access it using the hack CD?

If not, you'll have to try to find an original DMS to borrow to create the new DMS.  It won't work unless you start with an original.

[FooserPaul]

I guess I missed that step :-(

Oh well... off to Ebay to find a used but functional cartridge... Wish me luck!

Thx again for pointing me in the right direction.

[judb]

Mark is only half right.

Have you hacked your phatbox prior to the drive dying?  

if the answer is no then you either have to buy a new DMS from phatnoise, or send them yours for repair or borrow one to preform the hack on your box to enable non phatnoise drives to work in your box.

Those are your only options.

The newer version of the hack remove the need for a drive signature at all but we still copy it over there anyhow.

[FooserPaul]

I did NOT hack it before the HDD death... :-(

[judb]

Well now you know what you need to do and have options on recovery.  good luck!

[sbingner]

It would also be possible to do it if you connected a serial port, I have some code that can make it boot up an unsigned drive that way.... and could then give you a custom patcher to patch it.   Of course you'd have to make a serial connection then, and have a system running linux

Sam

[FooserPaul]

so if I have a unix/linux box and a serial port you can provide me some code that would allow me to do this w/o purchasing or borrowing a working cartridge?

If so... tell me more :-) or email me:  fooserpaul@gmail.com

Thank you!

[judb]

it will involve you taking your box apart and making a connection to the serial port header on the board inside which is not an easy task.  

[FooserPaul]

So perhaps this is a silly question, if you have to back up this file... can't it be passed (sent) along to solve this issue

[sbingner]

It's not a file or data, if you haven't applied the patch you have to either 1: have a signed DMS or 2: have a way of modifying the boot code before boot

[sbingner]

See http://wiki.phathack.com/Access_Serial_Port

if you manage to get that running and have a linux box running, I can help you.  Until then it would just be a collosal waste of both our time for me to work with you on it