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 :D ) Chances are, the Z1 will be severely outdated before I'd need to do any major repairs beyond that.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]

[quote name="03Aviator"]IIRC, there is a way to manually lower the door by spinning a wheel from an access hole in the case. I'm sure I read that here somewhere....[/quote] Yeah, 'saw the half moon slot, and tried turning that gear, but I couldn't get it to move with an amount of force I was comfortable with. I was unable to identify any sort of manual unlock, either. 'Must be well hidden. :-(

Anything's possible with sufficient time and determination. :-) The Gracenote update image is a good starting point for reference. Hopefully the update image files aren't cryptographically signed -- in which case, any developer with the right tools and target-hardware profile can write custom apps for the Z1. That's the point where I'm trying to get to, once the hardware-locking and password issues are out of the way. :-)

Hm... was that TFAT partition based on an image taken before, or after the Gracenote Update CD was used?

[quote name="thrang"]4) Optional security code - without the proper code, the unit doesn't function or functions in a severely degraded way - a modest theft deterrent[/quote] Actually, I'd be happy if we had a security Dongle -- preferably something wired to the unit (like the GPS antenna), and hidden in some location elsewhere in the vehicle. That way, the thief might get away with the unit, but it'd be useless unless he found the dongle and took that, too. ... as long as there's no easy way to get the stolen unit to accept a new dongle, though. :-) Along the same lines... I'

'Good to know, thanks! Aside from my powering up the Z1 once to unlock and lower the screen to get access to the HD door, my drive is still untouched. (I dunno how Jake managed to get his HD out of the unit without supplying power.. oh well!) I'm hoping to sniff out the master password with a logic analyzer so I don't have to molest it further from that password unlocking service.. and if that doesn't work out, I'll just go ahead and have the password clobbered like everyone else. :-) After that, I should be able to compare the virgin base image against a used image to figure out

'Just received mine (all the way in Hawaii) the other day. Nice, professional looking circuit. $35 is worth the hours it's saved me from building (and testing) my own equivalent circuit. :-)

[quote name="ducatiboy"]Well, Pulp send me his drive which he had got working in his Z1. Pulled it right out of his, and I put it in mine and no luck. Froze up. So my next test is to use his partitions that he created and load my files from my original drive. Maybe it has something to do with custom files on the hard drive with each unit as well. Maybe Pulp's Z1 is really special.[/quote] Bummer that Pulp didn't send you his drive with a virgin image, but then again, nothing beats actually testing the unit before delivery. :-) I agree with your assessment -- it sounds like custom f

I'm thinking the problem is more along the lines of the cluster size and root-directory size used when restoring the partition images. Pulp_Fiction may have gotten lucky with a conservative FAT32 formatting scheme; while the others (unknowingly) had their partitioning software use larger clusters to accomodate the larger partition sizes requested. I should have the rest of my gear ready in another week or two, and hopefully I'll be able to reproduce Pulp_Fiction's results soon. If things go as well as I hope, I'll have my unit's ATA Passwords sniffed out so I can just focus on progr

[quote name="ADAMB06"]I found this $1,479 pretty good! [url=http://www.sbhcorp.com/scripts/homeViewItem-1565.html]http://www.sbhcorp.com/scripts/homeViewItem-1565.html[/url][/quote] Thanks for the heads-up on this deal. I received my unit from these guys within a week at that price, sent via 2Day Air to Hawaii for a reasonable shipping cost. Smooth transaction. ... though (and I didn't check until after I ordered), their online reputation is far from spectacular.

I've also recently ordered a Z1 unit, and should have mine by the end of the week. I'm considering adding a carputer as well, but I won't attempt anything until I break the unit in for a month or two. (Just in case anything goes bad, I'd want warranty service before I void it..) In the pictures posted on this site, I didn't notice any standard connectors that would deliver the touch-screen coordinates to external devices -- unless there's some kind of bus adapter like the one used for the Mac Mini in a Toyota Prius hack. So, I'm preparing my lab for some warranty-voiding and mad so