Japanese conversion - where to start?

[mattsimis]

Originally Posted by Delboy

All sounds rather strange, if your sat nav connects directly to the screen does that mean you have no access to menus for car, radio cd etc?

If you could post a full scan of your car that might help.

You mentioned on the other fourm that you have vcds but it's not working correctly, is yours genuine and can compatible?

The Sat Nav takes over the screen when Nav is pressed, its like running two Operating Systems. One view is standard Audi (and Radio etc) and the other is custom (Audi JP OEM) Nav stuff. They do it this way (I suspect) as Kanji cannot be read easily on the low res standard Nav input. Their implementation is direct to screen.

The VagCom is legit and (I believe) compatible, I had no issues with my older VW Phaeton 2004 (or any of the other era cars Ive had). I believe its due to specific region coding with the Japan spec that its not understanding. Ill give it a shot again later.

See below some screenshots of the versions of HW and SW in the car.

[Delboy]

Unfortunately I don't have access to my etka and elsa to check much in regards to possible differences between jap and Euro spec but I would suspect mist of the differences will be coding or software versions.

On another note the etc card reader system should be easily removed

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Org-Audi-A...item2a3024d1cb

One retaining screw and unclips

[mattsimis]

So got Vag Com, enabled the Hidden Menu and started the Boot Loader (5510 and 5570 CDs) only to find it sticks on "Missing HMI Section in Metainfo".

Tried 2210 and some US versions too... it dies on all firmware versions I could find.. Its possible that version 1100 (or lower) would work and get me by this bit but absolutely nowhere to be found online.


Had to pull fuse 12 out of the passenger side box to kill power to the screen (which is stuck on permanently) so I can drive to work in the morning. Frustrating.

[Adrian E]

I've attached a guide on de-bricking an MMI

I have 1100 available for you - will upload to Mega and send you a link when it's done

[Delboy]

I beleive his mmi is 2g Adrian, nice info though and be nice if admin could drop it into tech info

[Adrian E]

D'oh! Don't have anything similar for 2G, but I'm guessing the green menu stuff might help, assuming a basic suite of functionality is written into hard memory?

I've sent a link to 1100 firmware upload

[Delboy]

area of particular attention worth looking into imo would be the

SWDL manuell - probably allows you to upload software, regardless of whether the disc is a
newer version
 SWDL ignore Region / VMC - probably allows you to upload software, regardless of the
locale driver.

Also if your doing updates to mmi please make sure that you have a 20amp min battery charger connected or have the engine running as a low voltage during update can create no end of problems

[mattsimis]

Thanks for the link, Ill give it a shot in the morning!

Delboy - I had actually already changed the SWDL ignore Region setting but didnt continue with the SWUpdate method and went bootloader instead (likely SWUpdate would have failed due to the HMI metainfo problem anyhow and I would have tried the boot loader anyhow!

[Delboy]

Oh dear, it's probably goosed now, but on the positive side you have nothing to loose by trying.

[mattylondon]

Just throwing out some questions here, is the MMI Interfacebox country/region specific? And if mattsimis has bricked his unit it's not a bad thing because he would need to swap this to a European part? There are many different units available depending on TV parking camera etc... I noticed from your photo you have 4E0 910 729 D. It's listed half way down below the 8DZ code which indicates your J523 is Japan region specific.


The PR codes are:
QV1 = TV reception
QV5 = TV reception and digital radio reception
7X8 = Park distance control, front and rear with rear view camera
7T4 = Navigation system for China
8DZ = Radio "HIGH" Japan

Also, it is worth researching if there are differences with his Module J533 to a european car?
Edit: in my research I couldn't find anything that correlates to region, only equipment such as ACC.

I can't stress how useful it is to have a full VCDS scan so we can compare your car to ours, it's a pity your car isn't scanning correctly.

Used analogue radio and navigation units are fairly cheap here and no doubt these will need to be replaced, and maybe some other units within the MOST loop (J533 & J523???). I am sure our sponsors can do a tidy package for you.