I am bench testing it before I put it in the car. So, I hook it up to ground and the yellow and red to 12v, insert disc, loads successfully, tell it that it is not a demo unit by hitting ok, goes to the time setting (i can see a map in background) and when I try and adjust time I get nothing, only the back touch button works, most of the other buttons work but some are grayed out which is expected because I dont have those options hooked up, goes to radio, goes to av screen, nav screen, but certain buttons are grayed. like trying to change back ground image, I can move around on map (LA) Im in Texas, I have the GPS antenna hooked up but its in the house so no signal, is there a wire I missed for bench testing purposes? What is the proper start up procedure for the D3 anyway? link to ebay of unit I bought, got it for 423 (had a 15% off ebay coupon).

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0349482434

If I understand your question...it sounds like the D3 hasn't pick up a strong enough signal to initialize. Once it gains a good signal and you have it connected to the VSS wire, it should fix those issues.

so without actually installing it I will have no way to tell its actually functioning correctly? I do not really care about the gps function yet, just want to make sure everything works on it, like changing time, background images, etc. etc.

-There are no stored bg images. You need to load jpeg's onto a cd or dvd and load the images from there...however, there is an asinine process to follow to get them to be seen by the D3 (i.e. you can ONLY burn with nero, but only on a special disc, on the 3rd tuesday of the month, after a blue moon) I did it once successfully with XP, and never got it right again. I found a copy of Nero, and it worked on the 3rd try. They need to be in a folder called "PICTURES" and there can be no more than 20 of them on the disc at once.

-The time relies on the satellite data, so no satellite, no time (i believe).

-Other things being grayed out is also likely b/c of the lack of satellite data.

ok, figured it out.....and I use to install, of course this was *cough* 10 years ago. I did the mod (moving wire), grounded appropriate wires, powered unit up with GPS antenna hanging out the window of my work area and time updated, showed correct map for my area, played a dvd, was able to test everything out and she works. Next is to get the bt, ipod, and xm units before final install into the car, and of course a newer map dvd.

Glad it worked out for you.