Like I said I'll try to image my HDD and post it here for you, just waiting on some hardware to show up to do that. I have a US unit.

 

I'm looking for dvd which has bootloader
it is not on your hdd
I have hard drives from different regions

 

I don't want to upset you, but you are working with the wrong device
this is 06, not 08

*english is not my mother languege )

 

I see, well If I can help any I'll try. I did a search for the DVD and it seems it will only be available from a dealer or from ordered from Clarion directly by a dealer.

 

This is 08 G35, not 06.

 

ok, you know better

 

doesn't someone on the forum work for a Nissan dealer?

 

I'm sure someone does....

Anyways, just made a bit of a breakthrough here:

 

That is an EXCELLENT sign!!!

 

Still digging around trying to see if I can do anything, but I did get the drive unlocked too.

Within the console there is an HDD menu, I did try to remove the security and password, but it didn't work. My guess is that there is a save or write command I need to run after to set these changes, but I don't know what it is.



SO, luckily I'm a tech hoarder and I still have an old Pentium D system with native IDE. I tried FreeDOS with the "ZU /p" program and it did work





And this lets me pop the drive back into my IDE Caddy in my main machine and read the drive.... creating an image now.





more to come..

 

Excellent...
What pins are you using for the serial connection?
In looking at the FSM for a 2011 G37, I don't see the "IT-PC" or "PC-IT" pins.

 

Sonic, this thread shows how the headunit was unlocked (granted it is in Russian, but...).

With all this progress...

 

Correct, the pins are not marked in the FSM. But, after looking at the manual from Clarion themselves we can see the unmarked pins.


This is also shown in that Russian thread.

So first you need to connect Pin 3 (TEST_B2) to ground, and this will put the unit into console mode (you won't get any output without doing this) and then you can connect TX and RX. But you also need a level shifter, I had this one already: And then you need a resistor across LV and RX (i think i used 10k), and you should be able to see the console.

But then, I ran into an issue where the Tx was inverted so we are now using software serial on the Arduino to invert Tx.


So at this point I am fairly certain the key to unlocking any extra features would be within the console, not so much on the HDD. But going back to the original idea of trying to clone to an SSD, I'm fairly sure we would need to remove the password and security from the console, clone the drive and then it should work fine.

 

Cloning to another drive worked, booting off an 80GB drive now. no errors. I used win32diskimager. I don't have an IDE SSD or i'd try that too.

 

iCrap, question for you as you know more about this tech stuff than I ever will...

My plan was to upgrade the headunit from HDD to SSD like I have done to my pc laptop and MacBook. Obviously a noticeable difference but they are SATA drives. Being that the headunit utilizes a IDE setup- which has a limited transfer rate- is "upgrading" to SSD even worth it?

Your opinion, stick with HDD or go SSD?