Can the HU mess up your MP3 player?

[ascertain]

I had a strange experience a few months back- I was traveling in my friends car, and he had a pioneer HU installed in his ride. He had also taken a USB lead from the rear. He asked me to plug in my MP3 player to listen to some music. Now here's the strange part- I connected my MP3 player (a Philips GoGear SA 6045 - 4GB) and the music played fine for about half an hour during the drive. We then stopped for a break, and on resumption of the drive, didn't hear any music, I checked out my player, and saw the display all messed up. I pressed all the buttons, tried to reset it, but no luck. I took it back home, hooked it up to my laptop, and had to reload the firmware again.After that, I've been a bit paranoid about hooking up MP3 players with inbuilt software onto HU's.
Any similar experiences anyone?

[frankmehta]

looks like the SSD (NAND flash memory) in the player went corrupt. happens with flash drives all the time. it happens most of the time, while data is being written on to the flash drive, and the drive is pulled out, or the computer is switched off midway. a simple format of the flash drive cures the problem.
in your case, there was no writing happening on the disk from the HU(which is impossible as HUs do not send any data to the USB), but looks like a loose connection that corrupted the data due to constant connection and disconnection of the player somehow. can happen if theres a bad cable in the transaction!
could also be that the Philips didnt recognize the connection via the HU, and just corrupted all the data! happens sometimes. difficult to explain the reason but does happen!

[ascertain]

Hope this issue does not recur with ipods- I badly want to try and hookup my iPod touch to my HU (it's ipod 'ready') because it costs a bomb, was having 2nd thoughts.

[abhibh]

Originally Posted by ascertain

Hope this issue does not recur with ipods- I badly want to try and hookup my iPod touch to my HU (it's ipod 'ready') because it costs a bomb, was having 2nd thoughts.

Must be an issue with Pio HU. My personal experience with connecting mp3 player with pio HU has been somewhat same and a friend connected his ipod to Pio 6050 (direct ipod ready) and after sometime it hanged and ipod restarted or something like that.

Which HU you have ascertain ?

EDIT: Just saw you have a kenny 2 DIN. I dont think there should be any problem, but you can try using the go gear before iPod. Though i have used ipod and have not faced any problem with kenny. Also iPod has a good customer service so you should not worry much.

[jayakumarkp]

I have had a similar issue with my Transcend 4GB pen drive while using on my previous SOny HU. It stopped playing after having worked fine for most of the day.
I still don know who is the culprit! Transcend after sales is really a pain.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by ascertain

... Philips GoGear SA 6045 - 4GB ...

Originally Posted by frankmehta

looks like the SSD (NAND flash memory) in the player went corrupt. happens with flash drives all the time. ...

@frankbhaimehtaji, can happen once in a blue moon, not all the time. Also, your observation and @pata-lagao's experience are unrelated.

If one removes a pen-drive during an operation, it does not corrupt the pen-drive's firmware - only the directory & some files go bad. Since the firmware is not corrupted, you can reformat the drive and get on with life.

On the other hand, Philips and other PMPs which use Philips SAA730 (not sure of the number) chip suffers from total amnesia sometimes - the firmware itself gets screwed up. The only recourse then is to reload the firmware. I had the same experience with a Creative PMP a couple of years back - had had the unit replaced after the blessed thing got amnesia one time too many.

[frankmehta]

Originally Posted by DerAlte

@frankbhaimehtaji, can happen once in a blue moon, not all the time. Also, your observation and @pata-lagao's experience are unrelated.

If one removes a pen-drive during an operation, it does not corrupt the pen-drive's firmware - only the directory & some files go bad. Since the firmware is not corrupted, you can reformat the drive and get on with life.

On the other hand, Philips and other PMPs which use Philips SAA730 (not sure of the number) chip suffers from total amnesia sometimes - the firmware itself gets screwed up. The only recourse then is to reload the firmware. I had the same experience with a Creative PMP a couple of years back - had had the unit replaced after the blessed thing got amnesia one time too many.

i dont think pen drives have any firmware.
didnt mean that. i meant the go gears firmware got corrupt cos it didnt recognize the source it was plugged into.
something on the lines of what you said, it got amnesia, which was restored after format.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by frankmehta

i dont think pen drives have any firmware.

How do you think it behaves as a pen-drive (intelligent communication over a serial link)? Pen-drive firmware is mask-programmed and not visible to the external world by any means. It is not dumb media like a CD or floppy disk where a random location can be individually located and read directly by the reader. It is an active device with communicates with the PC over the USB with a serial protocol. When the PC requests for bytes from a file, the pen-drive responds with the bytes. Ditto for writing, except it writes those bytes into its flash appropriately. The flash in the pen-drive is not accessed by the PC directly like RAM/ROM on the motherboard.

[frankmehta]

oh k. good explanation. what do you think caused it? i say philips firmware is bad and stupid. but then how do we explain the transcend???

[dinu2506]

It could be caused when you start the car with the USB plugged in and the HU is on with source set to USB. The sudden surge could cause it. My JVC AVX810 manual recommends not to start the car with the USB device connected.

[ascertain]

hey dinu2506- thanks for that piece of info- I have been doing the very same thing till now. Should get into the habit of taking off the USB from the HU before turning off the car.

[abhibh]

Originally Posted by ascertain

hey dinu2506- thanks for that piece of info- I have been doing the very same thing till now. Should get into the habit of taking off the USB from the HU before turning off the car.

ascertain another way is you can press the eject button on your HU for 3 - 5 secs and it will show "REMOVE USB".

Though i have been using USB since June 2007 and have never had any problem. Though i mostly use ACD's than USB but USB drive is always plugged in the HU.

[sanjz]

same here, have been using an Ipod / USB on my Blau for almost two years now but have never faced any such problem. However i make it a point to switch of my HU every time i restart my car , its like an involuntary reflex in my case.

[ascertain]

I should really make it a point now . Am too mesmerised by the new HU to turn it off before I get out of my car.

One other device I use in my car is an inverter



I use it to charge my mobile, Ipod touch or run my laptop. Do any of the members do similar stuff?. One thing i've been worried about is whether it would fry the devices circuits in spite of assurances of constant output of 300 W (the inverter is china made). On the fun side- it's one of the best gadgets I've come across.