Cosmic Gecko

'Hope you're running a separate power supply lead for that computer -- preferably your own installed wire that doesn't rely on the Accessory Circuit (or any other in-dash circuit) to signal "when" to turn on. Back when I was in Vegas, someone tried to steal my car, and used a hand-held stun gun on my head unit (one end to a knob post, the other to a wire that led to ground, I assume). That pretty much blew out the fuse, along with every device that lived on that circuit. This guy knew what he was doing. I lucked out because an attentive cop spotted the thief driving my car with a s

Mmkay, now I grok what Cirbirus is describing. The catalog files and filesystem aren't the problem -- it's appears to be easy enough to follow. The bummer part is that the Z1 appears to be hard coded for a header-stripped version of the file, which is (I assume from the file extension) encoded in Sony's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATRAC3]ATRAC3 format[/url]. The slight ray of hope is that this is the same format used by the Sony PSP, and there's an active hacker-scene there that figured out how to convert to the normal ATRAC3 layout. We just need to figure out how to munge

Getting MP3s onto the Z1 is being worked on, but it's a slow-going process. My approach (work in progress): * Mount the 4 partitions unlocked HD under Linux (/mnt/z1/[SDATA, etc..]) * rsync --progress -a /mnt/z1/* /mnt/z1copy * Reinstall the HD into the Z1, and have it extract a CD * Put the drive back to the Linux box. * rsync --progress -a [b]-n[/b] /mnt/z1/* /mnt/z1copy

rapayn1, Yep, I'm absolutely serious about it. 'Just takes a minute to pop the drive out and replace the cover, and I'm not too concerned about the wear n' tear. I'm very comfortable with the thought of cracking the Z1 open and reworking the board to replace a worn header if necessary. (I've got the tools to do this kind of SMD rework, thank goodness. :D ) Chances are, the Z1 will be severely outdated before I'd need to do any major repairs beyond that. For me, the Z1 is a cute toy that's valuable to me only as a device worth hacking. (Sorry, I'm a hacker more than I am a mobile

I share your disappointment, but am relieved that your unit was at least reimbursed by insurance. For security, I've got a few layers of alarms/intrusion-detector systems (with battery backups), and as a final kicker (in case they just do a smash-n-grab) I keep a set of torx drivers in the glove box and remove the hard-drive at night, or whenever I park in a shady area. (I keep an anti-static baggie around just so I can take the drive with me..) The way I see it, the unit is worthless to a thief if it can't do DVD playback or GPS navigation. So, at least if it gets stolen, the thie

Finally got around to putting my Z1 into the car this past weekend. I did a bit-for-bit copy of an original virgin image (via dd in linux) onto a 100-Gig Seagate drive (leaving 70Gigs unaccounted for, for now -- I just wanted to make sure the image was usable.). Everything worked great while I had the Z1 hooked up to the bench power supply. Everything also worked great when the unit was in the car -- until I started driving around. Then the unit would randomly freeze up regardless of what operation I was trying -- navigation, A/V, play a dvd. This leads me to wonder if the "fr

Unfortunately, ophcrack is for Windows Login passwords, not for hard drive passwords. Locked hard drives will give you a certain number of guesses, after which the drive needs to be reset to try again.. so brute-forcing a password isn't gonna be easy. Desktop hard-drives manufactured by Seagate have a Serial-port interface if you are willing to build an adapter circuit.. but it's not known if an equivalent interface exists on their Notebook drives. Apparently, you can issue instructions over this serial interface to clobber the password. This doesn't help for the original Z1 drives

Yes, this sounds like a scam. Bidpay is essentially Western Union, and is a scammer's haven. The seller can easily receive the cash and just run, and you'll have no recourse. I'll bet dimes to dollars the auction was listed with Paypal only to draw you into the sale. Would you o the AVIC Z1 community a favor and post the auction id and/or seller id so others might avoid that seller in the future? Thanks!

[quote name="DataAve"]Boat and fish.[/quote] ?? Did you mean "Bait and Switch", maybe? Or did I miss something?

Actually, I'm absolutely serious about removing the hard-drive.. the smileys are just me having the last laugh at the thief who has a fairly "unsellable" unit. (I've read elsewhere on these forums that Pioneer wants $500 for a replacement drive. Ouch!) As long as we keep the ATA Passwords a secret, and we don't publish images of the HD, this idea will work. Yep, not having a PIN-code of any sort sucks. If/when I get the courage to desolder the flash chips, I'll see if I can figure out a nastier firmware solution to lock my unit down. I looked at the test pads at the bottom, and t

Did Ducati send you his own drive with his image, or did he send back your known-working drive with his image installed on it? 'Could still be an image or signature-file type issue. If possible, maybe you could install both drives on a spare machine and run [url=http://www.componentsoftware.com/Products/CSDiff/index.htm]CSDiff[/url] in folder mode (be sure to click on the "analyze sub folders" checkbox) to determine the differences? (They're still FAT32 partitions and not TFAT, I hope...) That's pretty much the approach I intend to take, once I've got my hot-swapping rig set up..

Just take the hard-drive out. That'll stop 'em! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Arrrrgh.... 'wish this was part of the original thread message. I just placed my order... with Mastercard. $20 could have offset the extra shipping to HI. :-(

Thanks for the Heads-Up! :D :D :D Looks like I'm gonna have to wrap up my hard drive cable and sniffer experiments soon, now that I've got the last missing piece to do my install in one shot. (I hate cracking open the dash multiple times...) Ducatiboy, your review on the crutchfield page is downright scary. :shock:

Took a closer look at the test pads at the bottom of the Z1. Where there are circuit-board labels, I've labeled the pad; where there aren't, I've labeled with "??". [img]http://www.not404.com/files/testport_pins_labeled.jpg[/img][/img]