Installed a F900BT today. When I first installed it, the USB cable would recognize my ipod using the white apple cable, just wouldn't play the audio...no biggie since I had the ipod cable for the F900...just needed to install it. I hooked it up, and got nothing....won't recognize the ipod, won't charge it...nothing....doesn't even lock up the ipod screen.

So I tried connecting it to my HTC EVO...I would get the message on the EVO for SD Card access, but, again...nothing. No charging, no files, no music.

Frustrated, I plugged in a USB Flashdrive with 200 mb of music in a folder....the screen would display "now playing" or "loading files"...but nothing would show and the screen would lock until I pulled the flashdrive.

Thinking the flashdrive sucked, I reformatted another flashdrive, copied the music folder to it, and plugged it in. Now approx 3 minutes of music will play off the flashdrive before the USB stops playing (it's acting like it is buffering...when I pull the drive, music sounds for a second then shuts off). Once it does, it will let me go to the menu screen, but when I select another source, it begins playing from the source, but the screen locks on the source menu screen until I turn everything (the car) off and restart the stereo.

I'm new to the AVIC, so before you begin talking about booting to service screens and checking and uploading firmware updates, please be sure to include a link to a tutorial about anything you tell me. I like all the other aspects of the 900 (BT, NAV, SAT and Radio work like a charm), but I need this one aspect working or I'm yanking the whole damn thing.

Do you have the official pioneer cable connected or using some other type?

The cable was sent with the unit when I bought it from a guy on eBay. I've sent him a question about the cable. Near as I can tell, it is the correct one.

I downloaded the instructions for a firmware update from Pioneer and also the needed files.

The nstructions say go into the Service Information tab under System Settings to see the version number, but I don't see map version or version number....I see another tree with more selections....none of which give me the version number...????

I called Pioneer customer service today...while sitting in my car, I explained what I was looking at...and the tech told me I should not see DEBUG MODE when I tap service information. I guess the radio is in debug mode, which is preventing me from doing an update using the sd card. How do I get out of debug mode without cooking the stereo?

I decided to put the music on an SD card after trying to run the ipod cable with no luck....I do not know if the ipod cable is a legit one or a clone.

But my usb won't charge anything either, which has me confused....any help here would be nice.