apathyps

back up and running... ugh. how many more months until this happens again.

Well, my unit just shit the bed again. This will be the third time this has happened. The first time was about a year after I purchased my f900bt. Second time was shortly after that, maybe a month or two. This is really a pain in the ass. I am going to go through this step by step again tomorrow and hopefully get my unit back in business. After I get it working, I am going to call Pioneer and bitch at them until they give me the 3.0 update for free. I love this unit, but I fucking hate pioneer a lot right now.

theres been a few older threads on this.

hdd's dont get enough power to spin up via the usb input. not on the f900bt anyway. you need a secondary usb dedicated for feeding power to the hdd, and the other usb just for data. so far the most ive been able to get a hdd to boot up with is about 17GB of music recognized. right now, it makes more sense to buy a compatible ipod with a large capacity. im not gonna fold and do that though.

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=24072

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=23298

you have to triple click in WIN CE in order to open folders and icons etc.

dude, you really need to be very specific as to exactly what problem you are having.

you say you followed the above steps, and the unit is still rebooting? were you able to get through each and every step all the way from beginning to end?

can you get into testmode?

did you update to 2.006?

did you reformat in the service menu?

what exactly is your unit doing when you turn it on? splash screen to black screen? constant rebooting from splash screen?

details details details.

How far are you getting through the process? At what point are you having a problem and are not able to continue?

Be specific.

Hm, funny. I just followed the instructions in the other thread and was having some problems, but it was due to my inability to pay attention to some specifics. I ended up getting the thing running back in stock 2.006 just before i went to work tonight.

This is a very nice write up. Clears up some things in the original write up for sure. I have owned my f900bt for about 1 year and 2 months. Over the last two months, I have had to fix the unit first from the splash screen to black screen problem, and then to this constant rebooting problem.

Using the above guide in its original form, I was able to restore my unit to full working order. I happened to calibrate my screen accidentally while I was doing the reformatting and testing, and apparently it looks like i may haev saved myself a lot of trouble.

I am not 100%, but I am fairly certain that if people are having the rebooting problem or the splash screen to black screen and follow these instructions down to every letter, they'll be able to get their units back up and working.

It worked for me.

Thanks alot for this contribution red.

I am in the process of fixing a constatnly rebooting f900bt... redoing the flashdisk right now.

when im done, the firmware will be at 2.006

i was using cmh's mod previous to this rebooting problem, and i seem to be making enough progress now to think about putting a new mod on my unit.

will this mod (IDT 3.0 BETA) work on my unit with the 2.006 firmware?

maybe i have to grab the other mod from the topic "IDT v4.2 on p46, last for 2.0"?

just trying to make sure i dont brick my unit or have to put myself through any avoidable hassle.

thanks in advance.

I just had to do a similar reboot fix about a month and a half ago and it worked perfectly up until yesterday.

immediately following the previous fix that i did, i installed cmh's mod. things were fine, no problems at all.

now the thing constantly reboots. i have tried to get into testmode, i have tried to reinstall the 2.0 update, i have tried to update wince with the sd cards. the thing wont stay up long enough for me to get the sd card to format the unit. it'll read as far as 66% of the sd card before it goes black and shuts off. any other method that i have tried just keeps the thing rebooting every 10 seconds or so.

please help me.

i am using an f900bt.

does anyone have any solution for this?

***EDIT***

Alrighty. So apparently getting into the service menu by holding down MAP+MENU+EJECT isn't enough. It'll bring up the service menu and allowed me to begin navigating around to reformat, but within 30 seconds or so it'd restart. I finally re-read this thing enough to figure out that the directions tell you to also press RESET in conjunction with the 3 other buttons. That solved it. I was able to reformat in the service menu, reload 2.006 firmware, and get into Testmode using the 2.3 version so that I could follow the rest of the directions and get my unit back up and working. Thank you thank you thank you!!! 2 days without music is a terrible terrible thing.

well, my f900bt had the spalsh screen to black screen problem.

followed some posts on here and fixed it with a 2.0 update followed by a 'my flash disk' backup.

immediately after i went inside and grabbed cmh's mod for the first time, went down to my car, and now everything looks great.

initially it booted up in rear camera mode, but after i cycled my cars power, it seemed to be fine. will check again later on when im heading to work.

thanks for this cmh!

thanks for these instructions. heading to the car now...

**update**

this worked. i did it in conjunction with another poster recommending that you first redo the 2.0 update.

thank you for saving me the hassle of sending in my unit for 2 or 3 weeks.

i bought my f900bt 1 year and 2 days ago.

my unit started having the splash screen --> black screen problem 1 day ago.

called up my pioneer dealer, they said they are going to take care of it for me by sending it in for 2-3 weeks for "repair". im hoping they cant repair it and just end up sending me a new model :/

im heading out to the car now to try some of the fixes in this thread.

**update**

my unit works now, thanks so much for this post.

Oh to add we tried a 500GB Western Digital Passport 2.5" and it worked fine with the AVIC-F900BT.

 

 

 

I HAVE A SEAGATE 500GB N ITS NOT WORKN WIT MY F900BT

have you tried only filling it with 40Gb of music and giving it a few minutes to be recognized by your head unit?

well its a new day, time for some more testing on my F900.

For reference:

F900BT

WD 250GB my passport essential external

all music in either .mp3 or mp4 format

formatted the hdd using fat32format via command prompt in vista64

usb y-cable for extra hdd power

my goal is to get 130GB of music recognized >5 minutes.

last night i went through the drive and deleted all the cover art .jpgs, .m3u playlist entries, and random .txt and video files. when the drive was filled with about 68GB, it seemed to lag out the F900BT so that i could not choose a source to play music from. i was in a rush, so i didn't give it more than 3 minutes once i saw that it was lagging. this may have been able to be recognized had i given it another minute or two.

my last test was just trying to get 40GB of only .mp3's and .mp4's recognized. this works, but will not reliably cold boot. sometimes its recognized within 30 seconds, sometimes 2 minutes, other times 4 or 5. so far it seems like its a waste of time to wait to see if it will cold boot, so for the sake of time saving, im going to be plugging the HDD in once the system has booted (30 seconds after key turn).

will update later today as i make more progress.

thanks landmark, i read that thread and its my next step if the method that i am currently trying does not work.

it just seems kind of odd that i would have to format using the head unit rather than any fat32 formatter. should be the same exact thing, especially if im using the same allocation size.

landmark, whats the largest amount of data you've fit on an external hard drive that was recognized?

sounds about right, tho i didnt do the hardware bypass. software was much easier for me to do. couldnt be bothered pulling the unit out of the dash and splicing wires.

the lt green to parking brake was enough for me.

update:

67.9GB recognized to the point where the hdd colds boots while plugged in (before turning car on).

however, only ~800 songs were recognized out of 10,000.

right now there are 130 individual folders on top, with multiple album folders under that with mutiple mp3 files below that.

i formatted the drive intially with fat32format. i would love to hear if anyone used the win ce format method on the unit itself, and if they had any success with making more files recognizable.

back to the testing...

ruin your system? that is completely false. if you want the hardware bypass, just do some searching. its been answered a billion times. moev the mute wire from 4 to 1, or 1 to 4. cant remember. go search for 2 minutes and you'll find quite a few threads and hundreds of posts about it.

no, nothings changed. its 1 variable. just follow the directions. i wrote my own step-by step if you cant find any of the other numerous posts talking about how to bypass.

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=15663&start=210

boris, did you ever reach a limit on your hard drive? someone asked you earlier in a post and you never responded.

This format program worked well for me with vista to format HD to FAT32.

 

Boris - Let me know when you get over 40GB on your HD and If you start running into problems.

I had just under 40GB on mine and when I pushed it up started having my problems...

Thanks for the reply.

 

Will do... I probably have enough FLACs to bring the drive in and compress them...

and then you said you had 8GB in a later post... but did you ever fill it up passed 40GB?

*edit*

forgot to mention, i called pioneer support, they confirmed that they had used an "igo 80GB external hdd on the version previous to the F series and it worked fine when completely loaded with mp3's".

i am now in the process of shaving down my list to try and figure this out.

boris or anyone else have an answer before i waste my time unnecessarily?

**edit 2**

my policy for testing this is going to be shaving off 10GB until it is recognized within 5 minutes of plugging it in. then ill fiddle with maximum sizes until i get it close.

just trying to get this answered as quickly as possible. not trying to spam. just did a search for hard drives, wanted to make sure i reached the audience that might have the answers.

but thanks for your help.

so i just tried using my 250GB external western digital drive on my F900bt. it recognized the mp3's fine when there was only 1GB on there that i tested just to make sure it was in FAT32 and recognizable.

immediately after, i dropped another 100GB of music onto the drive and it didn't recognize it at all. The usb icon never lit up. i let it sit for 10 minutes and nothing.

ive seen some people have hit 40GB and havent been able to go passed it, someone else said they had about 17GB of music and 28GB of tv shows and it worked.

has anyone figured out if there is some hard cap on the F series that prevents you from using a full 250GB external hard drive to play music from?

i have all the files on the HDD sorted by artist/album/song.

any help here is definitely appreciated.

so i just tried using my 250GB external western digital drive on my F900bt. it recognized the mp3's fine when there was only 1GB on there that i tested just to make sure it was in FAT32 and recognizable.

immediately after, i dropped another 100GB of music onto the drive and it didn't recognize it at all. The usb icon never lit up. i let it sit for 10 minutes and nothing.

ive seen some people have hit 40GB and havent been able to go passed it, someone else said they had about 17GB of music and 28GB of tv shows and it worked.

has anyone figured out if there is some hard cap on the F series that prevents you from using a full 250GB external hard drive to play music from?

i have all the files on the HDD sorted by artist/album/song.

any help here is definitely appreciated.

so i just tried using my 250GB external western digital drive on my F900bt. it recognized the mp3's fine when there was only 1GB on there that i tested just to make sure it was in FAT32 and recognizable.

immediately after, i dropped another 100GB of music onto the drive and it didn't recognize it at all. The usb icon never lit up. i let it sit for 10 minutes and nothing.

ive seen some people have hit 40GB and havent been able to go passed it, someone else said they had about 17GB of music and 28GB of tv shows and it worked.

has anyone figured out if there is some hard cap on the F series that prevents you from using a full 250GB external hard drive to play music from?

i have all the files on the HDD sorted by artist/album/song.

any help here is definitely appreciated.

yo wiretap, i have a question about the functionality of the hdd with the f-series.

i own a 900, and im picking up a 250gb western digital passport to go with this setup. im just wondering if you have to use windows CE to format the drive into fat32, or if you can do it from your pc and have it still be recognized.

also, once you dump all your folders and albums on the hdd,

1. how are they displayed on the head unit?

2. does it show them as it would show an ipods library?

3. can you sort by letter? can you search?

4. is there voice recognition?

5. and most importantly, can you set it to random and have to play files from all over the drive?

6. and what if your album folders contain album art or playlist files or media formats other than mp3 like .flac or .wav. will those be recognized? what happens if while its in random, it jumps to a .jpg or some other format of album cover art, will it display it, will it not even recognize it?

sorry for all the questions, just want to know how functional this really is.