ccrobin

This worked GREAT! Thanks. In a nutshell, I reformatted the USB drive as FAT32 with a cluster size of 32K (using the windows command prompt). Simply right clicking on the drive in windows XP to format will only format the disk as NTFS. From the command prompt, you can format it in FAT32, but you must also specify a cluster size of 32K. (The pioneer unit uses WinCE which has difficulty reading cluster sizes over 32K. Many USB sticks come formatted with 64K clusters) To properly reformat the drive, get to the command prompt of Windows and type this: format /FS:FAT32 /A:32K /Q

I am having this problem too. When you say it is a problem with WinCE and some flash drives, can I assume that other flash drives will work OK on bootup? If so, is it brand/chipset specific or just "hit & miss"? I'd really love to not have to open my glove box, unplug & replug my USB stick every dang time I start my car.

Yes, my intention is to use a 2.5" laptop drive with a USB enclosure permitting power supplied via the vehicles 12 volt system. (See my parts list in the first post). It would be easy enough to supply a 3.5" drive with power; however the 2.5" drives generally handle shock better - so they are more suited to a portable application. The final product WILL be larger than a traditional iPod, but not by much. It should easily tuck into the glove box, behind the dash, or in the trunk. Besides, if I can fit 500+ GB of music on there I will gladly take a few things out of the glove box. I

Will I need to keep the iPhone in the Australia region all the time, or just until I transfer the phonebook?

I am trying to change to the TTS on my unit, but everytime I try to change from Jason, the system crashes and reboots. Anyone have any ideas? I have already re-installed the 2.0 updates per the instructions on this site.

This FTP site appears to be down. Is there another place where I can obtain a copy of the flash drive image? I bought my unit used and it appears the previous owner tried modding a few things and broke them in the process.

This will depend upon your vehicle. Some vehicles have fuse panels, cig lighters, and/or other electronics near the rear. Others won't have anything except the taillights. You will have to look to see if you have any power sources back there. In my last car I tapped the wire for the power antenna. A probe tester would be handy to check for this. You can get a tester for about $10 at any auto or hardware store. Be sure though that you pick a power source that is only supplying power when the ignition is turned on, otherwise the camera could drain your battery. Good luck! (P

Yeah, that one just gave me the idea to hack a newer one.

Anyone know if it is possible to add the MSN tuner via a hack? I presume the f900 & f700 share the same logic board, as I am told the DVD player mechanism from the f900 can be placed in a f700 - and the f700 will then play DVD's. Is the MSN tuner just a "plug-in" piece of hardware to the main logic board? If so (and if we can find the part number for the MSN tuner module) we should be able to upgrade the f700s (and maybe the f500's) to have the MSN services too.

Your iPod must be a 4G (4th Generation) iPod Photo. I am going to be using a 5G (fifth generation) iPod video as the platform. Here is a link to the iPod compatibility chart directly from Pioneer: http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/ephox/StaticFiles/PUSA/Files/AVIC%20F-Series%20iPod%20Compatibility%20Chart.pdf

OK, I am sitting here waiting for my new F700 to arrive and have been reading these posts to think about all the mods I want to do... I originally was excited about hooking up my external USB drive to have my entire music collection with me, but in reading here have learned that the interface is nicer, and load speed is much faster with an iPod. Also, album art only works with an iPod. I don't feel like paying $250 for a 120GB ipod, as I have more than 120GB of music and videos - so that got me thinking... With some searching on the net I see that others have successfully hacked a G3

You can purchase the DVD mechanism for the F900 unit and replace the CD unit in your F700. Its only a few screws and a ribbon cable. Only problem is that the F900 DVD mechanism is $265 from the Pioneer parts store. If you want to search for the part somewhere else, the part number is: CXK6631 (Note: The same DVD mechanism is used in the Pioneer P4000DVD head unit, so you may be able to pick one of them up used on Ebay for cheap and swap out the mechanism)

I am currently waiting on the delivery of my f700, but am now using a different WinCe based head unit (not Pioneer). It did the same thing. The time issue is definitely a WinCE bug, and not attributed to Pioneer. There is a patch available for regular WinCe devices that corrects this issue. Not sure if it could be applied to these head units though.

Any chance that this is porting the video to a different output (such as the rear display)?

Hello, I have a F700BT that has a bad CD drive mechanism (won't load discs). It looks really easy to replace the mechanism (and I can order it directly from Pioneer), but I was wondering if I could add a DVD mechanism from the F900BT instead? (I would like to add DVD functionality to the F700BT if it would work)