recce93

I did just that, 90BT to the 940 and love how much faster it is. I miss customizing it as it isn't as open as the 90 was/is. You lose voice command and 3D but will be happy with the faster boot times for sure.

Lots of support folks will tell you that you cannot use your old harness but I did. Couple of changes in the wiring but super easy to work around so the upgrade is real easy. Sold my old unit on ebay and recouped some of that cost.

Go for it

I just upgraded from the f90bt to the x940bt and though the RCA harness is completely different, you can use the connector from the f90bt with a little effort. It will save a lot of effort from trying to swap them from the minor differences especially of if you soldered and heat shrunk all the speaker wires like i did. So what are the differences:

1) There is only one blue/white wire that will connect to both to the antenna relay AND any remote power switch controllers (like an amp). On the F90 these were separate, one on the RCA connector and the other on the Power so you will lose one. Called pioneer on this and they said to use the one wire and connect it to the antenna and any power switch.

2) The sub RCA connectors are now on the unit vice the RCA connector. So now all that i use on the RCA connector is the rear view camera and the mute wire for the by-pass.

One or two of the names might be different for the wires but they are similar and easy to figure out. I recommend using the F90BT power connector to simplify the swap, honestly. GPS, Mic, SWC, IP-bus, antenna, are all the same.

Thought I'd throw my 2 cents into the ring.

Great mod, install was super simple and up and running in minutes. BOOT TIME has been greatly reduced. I was running your older version (about a year old) and is seemed to boot longer and longer over time. This one is super fast about what i remember when I loaded the older version. How do I keep it booting that fast? Or, what maintenance do I have to do to keep it in top shape? Thanks for all the great work.

Thanks for the Mod, just loaded it and it is unbelievable. Haven't learned all the neat things about it yet but what I have found so far are awesome. I think my unit (that has v 3.0 firmware) even boots faster with your mod, really.

Great work

I have the old model that doesn't have BT features and I am not sure what they are or if they are implemented different then the other buttons. But, as far as programming the buttons in the car, you can program it to do what ever you want it to do but you do have to follow the programming sequence in the install manual. You just skip the features you don't want or that your radio doesn't support.

For example, I skipped the mode (fm, am, cd) select feature when I was programming and used the mode button on my steering wheel as a mute button (ATT for the AVIC F90). The SWI has its features to program and they go in sequence. If you have 5 buttons on your steering wheel and the SWI has lets say 12, you can pick any 5 you want. Volume doesn't have to be volume if you don't want it.

So, yeah, I would guess your installer was either lazy or didn't understand the interface. It isn't hard but I could see where he would think that each button should do what it did on the old unit. But, again, it doesn't have to. He should have been able to program it to skip presets vice station search.

Hope that helps a little.

sorry it took so long, got pounded by the weather. I cant seem to find which brand I purchased but I am 99 percent sure it was a metra piece. Not perfect but good enough for now.

I put mine (f90bt) in my car not in my home theater. When I am listening to the radio/dvd/or music I have no idea what side the music is supposed to come from. If I reversed the left and right I don't think most people would ever know. I think it sounds great and never got the the volume up over about 35 so it prolly has plenty of power for most people. If you are an audiophile I think you aren't even looking at this line to begin with.

Give me a day or two. I will get some pics of my install of the F90 in my 09 Si. I ordered the factory dash piece because the reviews of the Metra or Schoche parts seemed to have some color matching issues. The Factory part matches perfect (the install was a lot more time consuming with the factory amp, radio wires, etc as my last install was just a simple CD radio in a 97 car.) Anyway, I will try to take some pics and find the part i ordered. It isn't perfect but I can live with the result. I will give you the info and you can decide for yourself. All, ok most, aftermarket stereos/nav units/what ever, are a nice glossy black and there are no cars that come with glossy black so getting everything to match like a factory stereo is never gonna happen. But, just give be a day or two.

Boot time and mods, it is a tough choice for me and in the end I think the pros outweigh the boot time issue. We can mod the crap out of this unit. Custom screens, backgrounds, colors, screen layouts and what info is displayed and the grand king of them all, the software over-ride, at least for me. It is worth the extra few seconds, you can get rolling and do what you need in a block because you aren't locked out of the unit like other systems (or oems).

Yeah my OEM camry nav is on like instantly but I also have to sit and wait in the garage or driveway to program the destination because as soon as I hit 1mph I am locked out. In my civic (avic) I jump in and go and when I hit the light at the end of the block I load the destination in. So, really, I an up and going faster than I am in the other car. All in all it is prolly the same amount of time.

I bought the system because of the mod ability and it is worth it. Just my 2 cents.

I have a F90BT (I know this is a D-seires thread) but I have wondered the same thing about my civic antenna. If I could use the civic antenna instead of the pioneer one I could go from their what 8ft cable to the civic 12 inch cable. That is getting rid of a lot of wire that I don't have to stuff somewhere. Talking to some custom install shops (not best buy) they won't touch the gps wire because they are so fine and are worried they will just ruin the wire. I have thought about buying an extra pioneer wire and just throwing caution to the wind and trying it. The shops also said the wires are sensitive enough that a kink in them can interfere with the signal.

Searching the internet I have seen some folks do it but mainly in marine applications. My thought is the wires need to be cut to make the antenna in the first place. Basically I haven't gotten the courage to try it on my system. If you go for it, I will be interested to see how it goes.

Good luck.

I have my speed wire hooked up and if I remember correctly it was the hardest wire of all to splice in because it is in the dash. Parking brake wire took a while too but that is because I wired a 3 position switch in with it so I can choose between connected (legal way), grounded (so I can use the software bypass), and the third position is not connected to anything. Back to the speed wire, my position is great and keeps track while in tunnels just fine. My old personal nav device just guesstimated the position when it lost satellites but this seems to keep it right on.

I have a 30 g ipod w/video model and it takes FOREVER! I don't buy music too often and really only update a few podcasts on it each week so it pretty much stays in the car all the time. So, I only turn on the VR update when I have added new songs (rarely) and leave it off at all other times. I thought the VR feature is neat and I showed it to my friends once but otherwise I just don't use it. I definitely don't use it enough to put myself through that pain. (Oh, I have about just under 20 gig of music on it just in case you were wondering about the time to update and the amount of music, the update seems endless)

I am having the same issue. I get a picture when I go into reverse from the camera on the screen just fine, but when I select rearview on the AV source all I get is the black screen with the normal text warning at the top (the same that is there when I am in reverse). Anyone know what the issue with the black screen is?

The update should cancel the software bypass. I am not going for the update as my maps are current (including the new construction) and I am not willing to give up the custom icons, custom map graphics, and on map route cancel and guidance mute.

I purchased the F90 because there are so many mods (backrounds, different icons, etc) and mine is customized to match my phone/car/and taste w/the great help of cmh928. So if I can't get the custom icons, over-ride, cnx nav or mute nav instructions and such back with the 3.0 update (i.e. no test mode) then count me out of buying it.

Map and firmware upgrade? Hmmm, wonder why they are not listing the 'upgrades'? My maps are really up to date for my area with most of the new roads. So, I really would be paying for the upgrade firmware/software changes but I would only do it if there were some good changes.

So pioneer, lets post that list!

Thanks for putting up all the information. Any idea if the 3.0 will add the extra features in the msn direct area (news, stocks,etc.) for the f series? Any mention of what is new or improved in the 3.0 update outside of the maps?

Thanks again

[attachment=0]Civic Si Switches.jpg[/attachment]Had the unit repaired for constant rebooting. Two weeks after getting it back I had the same problem as this thread and pioneer also told me it was for those that had it bypassed. I only have the software bypass done but I didn't want to loose the unit for a few weeks again so I tried the following, which worked great and is still running two weeks later. (but you need to have a back up of your original/clean flash disk)

- boot to test mode

- delete your entire my flash disk (only do this if you have your back up)

- replace your back up flash disk

- reboot and it should work

I tried this because I read in some threads that people had their units repaired and pioneer's solution was a software install. This worked for me and if it comes back I will try it again. Wish the unit wasn't so buggy (but I probably should tinker with it either).

Now I have a three position switch (middle switch in the pic) installed so I can ground the parking brake wire when I need to (override), have it connect to the parking brake wire if I need to have it run as advertised (like for the police or dmv), and a off position where the parking brake lead from the unit isn't connected to anything.

Thanks, awesome mod and super easy to install. I did the all-in-on-one for my f90bt then re-did the auto install with the big clock mod. This is beyond anything I could do and fixes a lot of annoyances that were there from the factory, updated the graphics nicely, and added some much needed features (quick cnx of the route, home short cut, etc.)

Anyone can ask for you to move this or that, or change the color of this to x. I just want to say thanks, you made my system go from good to great. Maybe pioneer will copy some of this into the next update

My unit (F90) kept continuously rebooting and needed to be sent in for repair. It sucked having that huge whole in the dash and no music in the car for six weeks. It got repaired and been working ok for the last two weeks. Even with the 2.0 update the performance is sluggish compared to all others. This is what I get for using a product that utilizes crap from Microsoft.