Hi,

I am not even sure what is going on but yesterday it happened 4-5 times in a row every 2 minutes or so until it suddenly stopped happening so I am puzzled.

I have PCM 2.1 with moBridge and iPod nano 16gb. So when I had iPod playing music as usual playback suddenly stopped with 'knock' in speakers, PCM made sound with its CD gear similar to what it does when you just turn it on initially, screen did not go pitch black so I do not think it rebooted but instead of showing song title it did show 'loading cd' and then playback continued. Then it happened again - sounds stops, 'loading cd' shows again, etc.

I charged battery overnight, turned on PCM while car was in garage this morning, playback started, in 15 seconds or so it did same again - playback stopped with 'knock' on speakers, cd head moved in PCM, 'loading cd' message appeared and then playback continued and was playing fine for 5-7 minutes with no further interruptions until I finally turned it off.

Have anyone had anything similar to this? As car was not started I do not see how it can be related to vibrations or anything else. Any ideas what to troubleshoot? Does it sound like PCM issue or mobridge issue? If it`s power related - what to look at? Have anyone had PCM doing anything like this?

I think something like that was happening at fall as well, so it is not a first time for sure but it was very sporadic (may be once a week) and never repeated as often as yesterday - every 2 minutes or so for several times. I contacted Scott at mobridge but he has no idea as it seems.

 

The same thing happened with my PCM and it had to be replaced. The head unit was shorted/blown somehow but it would still work intermittently.

 

How exactly your problem manifested itself? Was it happening while PCM was in radio mode as well as when on iPod?

 

I would have suspected the Mobridge. But if the PCM is cooked, I hope they don't blame the Mobridge, as the PCM is a $2400 part (mine is getting replaced next week due to problems, but I don't have a Dension or Mobridge connected.........yet.). Good luck with resolving.

 

I guess I will put mobridge into bypass mode and will try to drive with regular cd playback for a while to see if issue repeats or not.

 

Check all the power and optical connections on MoBridge, just in case, also.

 

It is annoying like hell - I just spent 40 minutes in the garage turning car on and off and waiting for that thing to fail again - but it did not happen a single time, naturally, as I had multitool attached to power cables and iPod next to me so I could see what happens to units` power line when it crashes. No luck.

Good thing is that Scott from mobridge says they will give RMA to send unit in for analysis so if this non-sense will continue in same way crashing every 2 minutes I will be able to send it out for investigation.

 

Just drove to a Prime Porsche dealership to pick up loopback adapter I forgot there 7 months ago (and service manager kept it for all this time in his desk drawer - kudos to him), so, it was about of 1 hour of total driving and damn thing did not fail a single time.

I start to suspect it happens only when car sits not moving for pretty long time - more than couple weeks and battery gets a bit discharged - I left car overnight on a charger 3 days ago and that was the only difference from before. Voltage now is above 13V. I am not sure what mobridge component may be so sensitive to voltage level. But it will take some time now to drop battery charge to mid 12v again. May be it does not like when alternator suddenly stops generating when I slow down and go to neutral, heck, it is quite annoying thing to investigate.

 

The Dension in my 06 was very sensitive to voltage drops and would hiccup occasionally if left unused for long periods, especially, as the battery got older.

 

May be it`s the reason then. I was just alerted as my primary warranty expires this July and PCM will not be covered by CPO that kicks in after it. So if PCM is having issues for real it has to be attended ASAP... But it does not seem to be PCM related IMHO. At least I am not able to replicate this.

 

Bridge the optics and see if the problem still occurs! or can you just shut off, by pass, the unit, like Dension?

 

I can do both - loopback adapter allows to pull jack completely off from unit and maintain optical bus or I can put mobridge into sleep mode when it`s not getting recognized by PCM at all. I guess I will put loopback adapter on for some time and will drive with mobridge off.