External Harddrive With Headunit

[RANDY]

Interesting... my USB still works just fine with any thumb-drive I use.

I had another look at the Pioneer manual... it says it can use any "Mass Storage Class" equipment... USB HDD's show up as a MSD (Device) instead.

It rather looks like you just cannot use a regular USB HDD due to the circuitry of the device.

This unit corresponds to the following.

— USB MSC (Mass Storage Class) compliant

portable audio player and memory

Realising that, I went and bought a 60Gb Ipod Photo... Which is in the "Classic" family. (4th Generation, version 1.2.1)

iPod® compatibility

This unit can control and listen to songs on an iPod.

! This unit supports only an iPod with Dock Connector.

! This unit supports only the following iPods.

Supported iPod software versions are shown below. Older versions of iPod soft-

ware may not be supported.

— iPod fifth generation (software version 1.2.1)

— iPod nano first generation (software version 1.3.1)

— iPod nano second generation (software version 1.1.3)

— iPod nano third generation (software version 1.0.2)

— iPod classic (software version 1.0.2)

— iPod touch (software version 1.1.1)

For maximum performance, we recommend that you use the latest version of the iPod software.

The iPod was doing the exact same thing! "N/A USB"... so I called Pioneer and got a semi-helpful bloke. He confirmed that the iPod photo *is* a "Classic", and should work. I then asked him whether newer versions of the classic firmware would work, because 1.0.2 is very old, and the iPod came with 1.2.1. He was quite confident that the iPod *had* to be that exact firmware version to work, no newer, no older.

For the life of me, I can't find the older firmware for this iPod to try and restore it back... I thought I had it, and found an old version of iTunes that supported the SHIFT-click restore mode, but it didn't want to know about the firmware I found.

So i'm back to using my 8Gb USB key, and seeing as how 32Gb and 64Gb keys are fairly cheap now... i'm wondering why I even bother! I'm going to sell the iPod and buy a bigger USB key. Eventually, i'll get rid of this P.O.S Pioneer HU and go back to Kenwood or something that controls the power antenna properly. (it still bugs me.. every day)