Very fun thread to read. Wish I had the time and cojones to try this (I'm afraid of losing perfect fitament as I've done with most of my other car projects).

Greg, (presuming you're a current UMR student) I would recommend trying to find a class project that aligns with your tinkering goals in order to maximize the take for your effort. You might even get some additional expertise involved (if only in a consultation role, you may not want others directly involved with your project). If you're a junior, senior, or post-grad there should be a pretty good chance of pulling this off, but it might be challenging otherwise. Regardless, it sounds like you're motivated and capable enough to do what you want on your own.

Can't wait to hear of your latest hack which lets me use Music Box as easily as the Ipod interface and strips the ridiculous DRM copy restrictions from the flash drive and hard disk.

Good luck GregUMR.

 

musicbox does not play/use MP3 but rather AATRAC

 

^^^Ya but if he can do what he is trying to do then that shouldn't be a problem. The musicbox rips cds to AATRAC but that doesn't mean it won't be able to read a MP3 file on the HD.

 

So I've been talking with some very experienced people in the openqnx forums who have worked with QNX for a long time. I'm trying to gather as much knowledge from them on the OS. Instead of dual booting linux, I think I may just try and get the gui for QNX to load ( the nav system runs above the gui ) and then I can just make our touchscreens go to the desktop of the photon gui (the gui for QNX). Then from there, you could click on a browser or click on your nav system default load up, or do other things.

This is pretty ambitious, but as long as the OS resides on the HD, I think it should be more then possible to do with minimal risk. BTW, can anyone link me to a service manual for the g37, either downloadable or something I have to buy. I want to have that in front of me when I take apart the dash. I'm not putting a single scratch on this beautiful car

 

https://www.myg37.com/forums/showthr...service+manual

good luck with this endeavor. reminds me of the first tivo hacking days.

 

Let us know when you've figured out how to play Doom on the display with the steering wheel controls.
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Can I bribe you to modify the nav software to ignore the stupid moving vehicle signal ? I despise Infiniti's chickensh!t lock-outs.

 

lol, that would be a great way to get in a wreck. How about some doom3??? heh..

 

taking the hard drive out is real easy. it should take no more then 10 mins at all.

 

I was browsing the Service Manual today and just came to a reality check. It's highly likely the QNX OS is stored on flash memory or ROM. If that is the case, I will be up a creek without a paddle. I mean, I could directly access the rom but thats above the level I'd want to operate on. If I messed up the rom, I'd have a bricked nav/audio system.

There is still a possibility some files that are needed are stored on the OS and used on boot up. If this is true, I will be able to do what I want to do. The reason I got pessimistic was the cars without the nav system ( ie no hard drive ) still have a way to browse around and access these different functions within the display. That means they are still using the OS without a HD. Which begs the question, would infiniti re-work their systems and utilize the HD for storing OS files on the nav system cars, or just add functionality in the OS to access the said HD and store no system files on it aside from the nav/map data.

I'll know shortly I imagine.

I found this to be a very disturbing piece of information in the Service Manual:
"NOTE:
• If fail-safe mode due to HDD malfunction is seen continuously, replace AV control unit."


This occurred multiple times. What I get from this is, if the HDD fails ( cheap to replace, 100 bucks maybe ) they replace your entire AV control unit ( which I assume is the entire head unit system ), which probably costs upwards of $1000+... Thats a very dishonest thing to do and would really jack the average g37 user.

 

I think the assumption here is off a bit: 1) You assume that the hard drive can be ordered as a seperate piece, which has not been verified yet??? Many Japanese manufacturers, to keep costs down, don't technically allow for individual component replacement (i.e., you cannot just order a resistor for the window regulator, etc.). 2) If the HDD has continuous faults, it may be the NAV/Head unit failing and writing bad data or crashing the drive. I have had many PC's that, due to memory or controller issues, wrote bad sectors to the drive that the OS didn't know what to do with.

I don't believe it is necessarily dishonest, but a wash in repair / diagnosis costs out of warranty. Your average service person isn't qualified to diagnose an OS/NAV failure that causes the HDD to throw codes and I certainly wouldn't want that diagnosis process to be on my dime (out of warranty) at $140-$190/hour! While IN warranty, the process to replace the unit/diagnosis causes me about as much concern as taking the life of an ant in my pantry. It's more inconvenience than anything else - hopefully we don't have a lot of this issue.

LL

 

The thing is, replacing a failing hard drive is infintely easier then replacing a surface mounted component (IC,capacitor,resistor,etc) because there is no soldering to be done. The HD will be 6-12 screws, remove, replace. The service manual shows the error codes that are thrown and the codes tell you where the problem is originating. While the car is under warranty, I could care less if they spend 1500 dollars to replace my head unit when only the HD is bad.

However if it was on my dollar, I would investigate it myself and determine if the HD is bad, as opposed to paying 150 dollars and hour for diagnosis/replacement and 1500+ for the head unit replacement. 200 dollar DYI replacement vs 2000+ replacement while not under warranty. We'll see how these things hold up, I imagine the HD failure rate will be fairly low.

 

@GregUMR - Before wasting too much time trying to upgrade to a larger HD, try ripping a couple dozen cd's to the HD and see how what a pain it is to navigate to the song you want to hear.

If I had time I'd focus on trying to utilize the CF a little more. Perhaps you could create shortcut links on the CF to songs on the HD. Does QNX have an autorun feature that could execute some code off the CF when it's inserted? That could open up many oportunites.

Also, I think it's more of a Bose thing than Infiniti. And I haven't had much luck googling for technical info on the Bose Music Box.

 

Any updates GregUMR? I am curious whether this project has died.

 

Hmm...what about cars that don't have nav? Where is the OS that is controlling the AC, mp3 player etc..being stored? Has anyone noticed how portions of the OS used is slightly similar to that used in the Skyline GT-r? It would be awesome if there was a way to mod the os to get more obdii data