Anyone who's interested in hacking their Nav system, I just found this thread on another forum...

http://www.mitsubishiforum.com/m_182503/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm

Not a lot you can do yet, but you can replace the 30GB drive with a bigger drive and expand the musci server partition from the default 5GB to whatever you need to hold your collection.

Unfortunately, based on my research, it sounds like the hard drive can only rip music from real audio CDs. So if you have an iPod or other MP3 player then you'll have to burn all the songs to CD, rip them back to MP3 on the drive then manually edit all the artist/title info.

Alternatively I also found a reference to a user who claims that MP3s on a DVD will play in the system, as long as you use software capable of making an MP3 DVD.(like Roxio) So if you went that route you could load up the system with DVDs (it holds 6 right?) giving you the ability to hold ~28GB of MP3s (or ~50GB if it takes DL disks)

Dan

thats awesome info! thanks so much!! i have to do a lot of reading!!!

(Moved to '08+ Lancer Common Electronics & Audio since this is a common system between all of the 08 lancers)

Wow, that guy did some great work. Hopefully he can do something nice with it.

I wonder if you could pull that drive onto a PC and then copy the music to it that way.

Nope. According to that post the music files are in some sort of proprietary format. (.sc file extension)

Dan

Jesus, that's about the most complicated thing I've ever seen. And all that just to allocate more space for the music partition? No thanks... Impressive though.

Actually if you read through the whole thread they've refined the process since that initial post. Basically what you can do now is you can pop out the drive, connect it to a PC and then use an XBox hacking tool, which is freely available, to unlock it. After that the drive can be imaged onto a new drive to expand the music partition, or you can mess with the various files on the drive. (some people talked about the possibility of upgrading the navigation database using this hack)

I actually did the XBox hack once a few years ago. It wasn't that hard to do if you know your way around a PC and a command line.

Dan

Actually if you read through the whole thread they've refined the process since that initial post. Basically what you can do now is you can pop out the drive, connect it to a PC and then use an XBox hacking tool, which is freely available, to unlock it. After that the drive can be imaged onto a new drive to expand the music partition, or you can mess with the various files on the drive. (some people talked about the possibility of upgrading the navigation database using this hack)

I actually did the XBox hack once a few years ago. It wasn't that hard to do if you know your way around a PC and a command line.

Dan


It's quite amazing what they've done with hacking that system ... just to throw a thought out there... with Solid State Drives coming down in price.... and given that they can take greater shock and can operate in a greater variety of temperatures.... i'dt be cool if you could plug one in?!

SSDs are designed to work as drop in replacements for standard hard drives, so the system would be none the wiser if you used one. However all the ones I've seen are SATA, and this system uses standard ATA (aka IDE), so finding one that's compatible might be an issue. You also have to consider that a 36GB SSD costs $600-$700, while you can get an 80GB magnetic hard drive for about $50. Not really a smart investment in my opinion.

What would be really cool, in my opinion, is if someone started selling bigger drives with the relevant software already imaged onto them. That way people could just pop them into their systems without having to mess with the original drive. Kind of like how places like Weaknees.com and DVRUpgrade.com sell bigger drives for your TiVo. :)

Dan

Jesus, that's about the most complicated thing I've ever seen. And all that just to allocate more space for the music partition? No thanks... Impressive though.

Well, he could add new maps for the GPS, customize the interface, etc.

SSDs are designed to work as drop in replacements for standard hard drives, so the system would be none the wiser if you used one. However all the ones I've seen are SATA, and this system uses standard ATA (aka IDE), so finding one that's compatible might be an issue. You also have to consider that a 36GB SSD costs $600-$700, while you can get an 80GB magnetic hard drive for about $50. Not really a smart investment in my opinion.

What would be really cool, in my opinion, is if someone started selling bigger drives with the relevant software already imaged onto them. That way people could just pop them into their systems without having to mess with the original drive. Kind of like how places like Weaknees.com and DVRUpgrade.com sell bigger drives for your TiVo. :)

Dan


Good call.

wow reading all this is like heating up water to boiling point and pouring it all over yourself then peeling off the skin to find out that your skin will never grow back because you have a rare skin type..........in short words DAMN!

wow reading all this is like heating up water to boiling point and pouring it all over yourself then peeling off the skin to find out that your skin will never grow back because you have a rare skin type..........in short words DAMN!

:inout:

SSDs are designed to work as drop in replacements for standard hard drives, so the system would be none the wiser if you used one. However all the ones I've seen are SATA, and this system uses standard ATA (aka IDE), so finding one that's compatible might be an issue. You also have to consider that a 36GB SSD costs $600-$700, while you can get an 80GB magnetic hard drive for about $50. Not really a smart investment in my opinion.

What would be really cool, in my opinion, is if someone started selling bigger drives with the relevant software already imaged onto them. That way people could just pop them into their systems without having to mess with the original drive. Kind of like how places like Weaknees.com and DVRUpgrade.com sell bigger drives for your TiVo. :)

Dan

Yeah ... agreed - its prices are horrendous.... as a computer user though, if it does come down to a more economical price.... imagine those on a RAID5 setup.... FAST and SECURE :) Anyway, sorry for getting off-topic...

A bigger drive that's pre-imaged would be SWEET.... :)

When I get my hacked Nav, I will have it play an opening action movie theme every time I start my car.

If you use Itunes to burn your music and you turn on the "use cd text" (or something can't remembered what its called but it wil be obvious) look under EDIT->Preferences-Advanced->Burning.

Anyway, burn your mp3s using this and gracenote will read it in and you won't have to type in the names. Just make sure to name your playlist whatever you want the "album" to be called.

Good to know, thanks.

Dan