Windows based DMS / Phatbox Hack (HackCD replacement thread)

[nathanbeach2]

Thank you for all your hard work!  I now have 120 GB in my trunk. 

I thought it might help to summarize this thread for those in the back, who might be a little unclear on the concepts.  I was a little confused trying to fuse the various instructions / hints in this thread with the old visual instructions on the wiki.  This process combines the text by Judb and others, and worked for me on my 2003 VW Jetta / Monsoon V upgrade. 

Please respond if there's anything wrong in my description here.  After a few days and some feedback, I will move this over to a HOWTO in the wiki if no one objects...

• Get the current dmsutils*.exe from http://downloads.phathack.com/judb/ and unzip them to your c:\ drive.
• With your original DMS, run BackupDMS.bat (you might as well) and follow the onscreen prompts.
• With your original DMS, run DMSHack.bat and follow the onscreen prompts.
• Now insert your original DMS into the PhatBox in your car.  You need to turn on the ignition and power up your PhatBox.  Attempt to play a song, if you hear a message stating your box is patched remove and continue to next step, otherwise wait a couple minutes then remove and reinsert dms and repeat this step once or twice.  Please turn off your head unit and wait a bit to see if the lights on the phatbox turn off.  (otherwise you may have corruption issues with the log files and have to run chkdsk on phtsys partition)
• After this is done, remove the original DMS from your car, load it into your computer cradle, and check that everything says verified in phtsys/log/patchverify.log.  If not, you may need to corrupt your phtsys/ramdisk.sig file (open it in a text editor and put garbage text in the file), and then stick the original DMS in your PhatBox again to force it to finish the firmware update.  Search the forum if you need more info about this.
• After all this, you can put your original DMS back in the computer cradle and run patchclean.bat to remove the hack files from the original DMS and set it back to normal.
• Now perform the actual hardware swap (simply remove the four screws on the back of the DMS, carefully swap the hard drives, and screw it all back together).
• Put the new DMS into the computer cradle and run NEWDMS.bat.  It will prepare and format your new drive (may take a while).
• Go to http://downloads.phathack.com/firmware/ and download all the latest firmware for your car type.
• Unzip each of the zip files to the root of your PHTSYS drive, copying over the old files in the process.
• You may now want to load up some test music with Phatnoise Music Manager.
• Finally, take your new DMS out of the cradle and put it in the PhatBox in your car.  Let the system run for a while (allow the green light to finish blinking).  Then start up your head unit and try to play some music.  Hopefully everything will work.
• JudB suggests: After hacking, back up the c:\dmsutils folder.  Also, don't do anything with your old drive (like turn it into a mini external HDD) -- you may need the original some day.

Again, thanks for all your help and hard work.  It's hackers like you guys that make the world go round...

N

EDIT: Correct some misleading info - sbingner

[SteveC]

• Now insert your original DMS into the PhatBox in your car.  You don't need to turn on the ignition -- unless the PhatBox doesn't power up on its own -- you should hear the quiet whirr of the hard drive and see blinking lights on the front of the PhatBox.  Let the system run for at least five minutes, or until the green light stops blinking.  The firmware on the PhatBox itself is being updated. 

This part is incorrect. You have to turn on the headunit and select the Phatbox as the source (as I just learned the hard way). It only runs the patch when it is active.

[SteveC]

I have created a new page on the WIKI (http://wiki.phathack.com/Windows_Hack_Procedure) that outlines this procedure as I understand it (leaving out all the random flailing around that I experienced). I'm sure there are items that could use correction/clarification/expansion, but I think it's a good starting point and might help eliminate a lot of the questions people have.

[judb]

I am under the weather, again, so I'm not going to attempt it today, but it should be really simple to fix the DMShack script from overwriting files if they already exist in the backup folder... I didn't think about that when I was working on these and I don't think it crossed Sam's mind either.

Really though there shouldn't be any reason to run the hack script more than one time if people follow the instructions properly, I think.  Could be wrong there though.

Also we are talking about merging the versions and just using the newer patcher for everyone.  maybe we'll do another release later in the week if we have time to iron out the changes to the patcher and the scripts.

Thanks for the wiki page, I'll add a link to it in the first post.

[judb]

New patcher released today for both volvo and non volvo phatboxes / music kegs.

Version is 1.2.0

This set of scripts includes some updates so that if you run the hack more than one time it will not overwrite the backed up files and it will recreate the bootload.log to default so you can verify the box is booting properly.

phatpatch version 0.8 has been added.  We hope this will help more with patching stability.  Time will tell.

[rumatt]

depending on which version of PMM you are using, a hacked DMS may not work properly.  What version of PMM are you using?

Are there known versions of PMM (still available!) that work with hacked drives? 

I'm assuming there must be, as I doubt everyone who has hacked is doing all DMS updating manually.

[kapper]

Making the new DMS appears to have worked. The patch.log shows that the patch was successfully applied, but when I bring up Media Manager, it says 'error retrieving DMS id' . How do I get Media Manager to recognize my new (hacked) DMS now?

I just tried Media Manager 3.30 with a newly hacked 120gb Samsung 5400rpm drive and it has worked for me.

File split into two...use file joiner after downloading

Use HJSplit freeware

http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/


http://rapidshare.com/files/29289655/PMM_3.30_setup.exe.001

http://rapidshare.com/files/29301058/PMM_3.30_setup.exe.002

[dburns]

Hi - I just purchased a used phatbox and expect to have it in a week or so. I'd like to pick up a 160GB drive, and reading back on this thread, it looked like 160GB drives were working, but then I saw the below:

I've disabled the LBA48 kernel deployment as its caused some issues with the script I think.  you can download the file from http://downloads.phathack.com/sbingner/ if you really need it.

Does the latest release of the files (as of July 2007) support 160GB drives as is, or do I need to snag the LBA48 file? It's not clear to me.

Thanks,

-db

[judb]

you'll need to snag the file yourself.  I was having issues detecting if it needed to be installed or not because windows is a Pain In The Neck for scripting sometimes.

[dburns]

you'll need to snag the file yourself.  I was having issues detecting if it needed to be installed or not because windows is a Pain In The Neck for scripting sometimes.

Got it - THANKS!

[franck3d]

http://rapidshare.com/files/29289655/PMM_3.30_setup.exe.001

http://rapidshare.com/files/29301058/PMM_3.30_setup.exe.002

[/quote]

Does anyone else have access to 3.30?  The rapidshare site isn't allowing anymore downloads of part 2.
Or is 3.92 okay for hacked drives?

[judb]

im using 3.92 just fine on my hacked drive.

[dburns]

Does anyone else have access to 3.30?  The rapidshare site isn't allowing anymore downloads of part 2.
Or is 3.92 okay for hacked drives?

I think you just hit the download limit for rapidshare. For free downloads, it makes you wait a couple of hours between large files. Try again.

-db

[franck3d]

im using 3.92 just fine on my hacked drive.

Thanks, that's a relief!
Now I just need to backup my drive for safe keeping.

[Pir8Man]

what does dmsfilecopy.bat/.sh do?
the original instructions say it should be run an a new or hacked DMS drives.
mine was hacked with the hack cd.  do I need to run this to update/fix something?
so what does it do exactly?

[judb]

if you already have a hacked box, don't sweat it.  this is just a redo of the CD method that works under windows and has a different process than the CD method.

[Pir8Man]

phew. thats a relief.  I just wanted to make sure i wasn't missing out on any new features.

my hack'd box is doing great!  I went from a 20gig to a 120 gig. which has a larger buffer and a lower power consumption.
thanks guys for all the hard work.

[dippdydo22]

First off, let me tell you that I am a complete newbie...  I have been reading your web site for a long time and had a few coupons I needed to use at Best Buy, where I picked up a 160 gig Seagate Ultra ATA/100 hard drive.  I have read through the instructions for hacking, etc...  I think I am almost ready to go.  With the exception that I just read through the topic of 160 gig drives, and am wondering, will it work?  I haven't been able to locate a clear answer, but is there something special I need to do to use the drive?  I really only have about 60 -70 gigs of music, so at this point, if the entire drive is not used, it is not a big deal, but if I can set it up to be able to do that from the beginning, that would be great. 

Also, I read something about the Media Manager software not working with a hacked drive...  However, when I use the Music Manager, it doesn't seem to recognize the mp4 files I have switched to instead of mp3.  In Media Manager, all of my mp4s are recognized, etc.  Will I have a problem with this going forward?

Any advice you provide would be fantastic.  I am very excited to give this a shot.  I work in technology, but this is the first time, besides adding a drive or something to my computer, where I am actually digging into something...

Thanks.

Dippdy

[dippdydo22]

Disregard my question about 160 gig drive...  I posted before and forgot and found my answer...  Thanks!

[MackDnewb]

Can I just pay somebody to do this for me.....then send me back whatever I will be puttin in my Phatcradle and Phatbox?