I suppose it is always possible that the newer connector gets power from the USB, which could be programed to stay on if no signal is detected by the PCM after 10 seconds following the PCM's 'ping' to the ipod.
With the original iPod pin-cable, maybe the signal from the iPod is expected to return-path to the PCM in 4 second or it will cut the power. And, maybe it takes the Nano 5-6 seconds to correctly respond. The PCM will believe that the ipod was removed or faulty and cut the input.
It is hypothetical, but possible.....

 

Put me down as someone else having similar problems. Several times the iPod has gone dead, flat battery. I've had to unplug and replug the cable to get it to charge (single cable). I bought the ipod in November 2008 by the way - 120Gb classic.

When I do that the ipod charges and normally works fine. However a couple of weeks back it wouldnt and was so dead even the mains charger wouldnt bring it to life. I had to take it back to apple to be kick-started.

Interestingly if I unplug the ipod end of the cable it seems to make no difference. I need to unplug the actual car end. Weird but definitely not right.

 

Oh... right... duh! I WAS being dumb ;-)
/simgr

 

Has anyone made any progress on this? I am almost wondering if a trip to radio shack to research this is in order. Everything other car I have used the iPod with did not have this issue. Has there been a PCM update, anything, that might address this?

 

Read Reply #4.

 

That definitely did not work for me. I bought the newest iPod adapter maybe 4-5 weeks ago, plugged in both the USB and the data adapter to the console when I picked up the car, and then the iPod adapter to the iPod. The iPod will discharge while the car is powered off.

 

That may actually be good, meaning it does not drain the car's battery. In any case, why do you care? the iPod retains charge a long time if in sleep mode... and next you start the car it will be powered again, anyway.

 

1 clarification - if the iPod went into sleep mode, as all of the other posters in this thread are saying, then we wouldn't have any issues at all.

The iPod does not retain it's charge all that long at all when not in standby; it goes down over a day or so, and then stays down, because I don't have a 6 hour commute that would let the iPod charge back to full power. So every single time I start the car, the iPod is discharged, and about 1/3rd of the time it doesn't boot back properly in I am assuming sufficient time, so for that entire drive the iPod is dead/not connected to the PCM. This has happened a few times, and even cycling power on the Porsche (shutting the car off and bringing it back on again) would not re-connect the iPod.

 

It seems that there are actually 2 issues here. The first is the iPod not charging, and the second is the iPod not being recognized when starting the car and subsequently locking up/crashing. I have the older cable and the square nano. I have never had much of an issue with charging. My Nano always shuts down when I turn off the car.
What is the problem that I am seeing, is that I will start the car and the nano is not recognized right away and then it locks up. I then have to do a hard-reset of the nano that takes a few minutes to work. It sucks because you may be driving by the time the PCM switches to Radio. The you have to pull over to restart the iPod. Unplugging it does not work. I did find a work-around that reduces the severity of the problem. That is to set the devices sleep timer as long as possible. There seems to be a lag where the PCM does not communicate with the nano, and the nano starts to sleep. There is probably a bug that causes the crash at that point. I used to get around this by just hitting the "play" button after a few seconds of turning the car on. That would keep the screen from sleeping until PCM did it's thing.....My iPod used to crash almost every time I got in the car. Now, it is more like once a month or so. I told the dealer about all of these issues a year ago and they told porsche. Nothing came of it. I doubt anything will, since it does not effect everyone's iPods.....