Phatnoise Install

[EddyH]

Yes it recognises it as a drive so probably can be used to play MP3's directly from it. I don't listen to music in the house though so never tried.

BTW 55gb of music is alot, must have cost you quite a bit.

 

[slimjim]

Yes it recognises it as a drive so probably can be used to play MP3's directly from it. I don't listen to music in the house though so never tried.

BTW 55gb of music is alot, must have cost you quite a bit.

I have spent three weeks so far ripping my CD collection... im about 70% through it now.

I recon 10-15% of it is downloaded.... The rest of it is all bought and paid for

I can't pinch is from anyone else as no-one else like my toonz....

What a WASTE of money!

 

[EddyH]

I still have alot of CD's that I haven't bothered transferring as I doubt I'd bother listening to them.

 

[slimjim]

I still have alot of CD's that I haven't bothered transferring as I doubt I'd bother listening to them.

That's a BIG mistake my good man.

Get them transfered, stick it on random.... and I PROMISE you will find some gems.

We ALL have music in our collection we dont even know about and that we will LOVE when we hear it. Trust me.

 

[adaml]

Judging by the website, the drive is formatted as FAT32 so it should come up as a removable storage device. I would imagine the cart contains a laptop hard drive as the max you can buy is 120Gb. Slimjim's right, you can't yet buy 160Gb laptop drives.
If that's the case then in theory you could upgrade the cartridge yourself as long as you're not bothered about invalidating the warranty.

On another note - looking at Mikan Motor's ebay items, the Audi Phatboxes are $159 but the VW ones are $195. Is there a difference and if so which one is best for SEAT?

 

[EddyH]

Judging by the website, the drive is formatted as FAT32 so it should come up as a removable storage device. I would imagine the cart contains a laptop hard drive as the max you can buy is 120Gb. Slimjim's right, you can't yet buy 160Gb laptop drives.
If that's the case then in theory you could upgrade the cartridge yourself as long as you're not bothered about invalidating the warranty.

On another note - looking at Mikan Motor's ebay items, the Audi Phatboxes are $159 but the VW ones are $195. Is there a difference and if so which one is best for SEAT?

You need the VW one as the Audi kit uses a different connector for the CD changer. The VW one works with VW, Seat and Skoda.

 

[EddyH]

That's a BIG mistake my good man.

Get them transfered, stick it on random.... and I PROMISE you will find some gems.

We ALL have music in our collection we dont even know about and that we will LOVE when we hear it. Trust me.

I suppose I should but I'm lazy.

 

[adaml]

You need the VW one as the Audi kit uses a different connector for the CD changer. The VW one works with VW, Seat and Skoda.

Cheers Eddy! It would be the more expensive of the two wouldn't it.

Did you get hit for Duty & VAT?

 

[PhilW]

I'm liking the look of this product, i was goin to get a mp3 disc changer and get a 'connects2' link for it for my head unit but this is far better.


Do either VW or Audi ones work in a Seat?

 

[EddyH]

Cheers Eddy! It would be the more expensive of the two wouldn't it.

Did you get hit for Duty & VAT?

The price is still very good, I paid more than that for my first one. Although my second one was around the price of the Audi one, maybe the price went up due to demand.

I didn't get hit for charges on my first one but did on the second one.

 

[EddyH]

I'm liking the look of this product, i was goin to get a mp3 disc changer and get a 'connects2' link for it for my head unit but this is far better.


Do either VW or Audi ones work in a Seat?

As my post further up you need the VW one as the connector is different on the Audi item.

 

[slimjim]

Slimjim's right, you can't yet buy 160Gb laptop drives.

NEVER take my word as gospel ....

160 gig Seagate Laptop hardrive

Momentus 5400.3 is the first Seagate® product utilizing perpendicular recording technology. This innovative technology allows Seagate to deliver the industry’s
highest capacity of 160 Gbytes in a single 2.5-inch disc drive. Perpendicular recording also enables a more reliable, faster performing drive. Using a thicker recording layer and standing the bits on end frees room on the disc,which lessens the chance of thermal decay. This higher thermal stability delivers increased performance in demanding high temperature and rugged operating environments

Perpendicular recording ....

 

[adaml]

Lol @ "standing the bits on end"

 

[slimjim]

Lol @ "standing the bits on end"

Me finks me need to go back to Uni.....

 

[adaml]

Just ordered one!

Ordered a phatbox 20Gb off ebay. Having sent 2 emails to Mikan Motors asking what UK shipping would be, with no reply, I ended up ordering from the phatnoiseuk bloke. If I got hit for VAT, Duty, and duty collection fees on top of UK shipping it wouldn't have been all that much cheaper, and this way I should get it faster.

Going to look out for a 40 or 60Gb cartridge, and then maybe sell the 20Gb.

Anyone known if you can swap the carts between different types of vehicle e.g. the wife has a ford escort - if I got her a ford compatible phatbox could we swap carts round? Hmmm I presume not as the manual says something about the firmware being on the hard drive.

 

[slimjim]

If it's a standard size hard drive ... then sureeley you would be able to not only hat swap them between cars... but ALSO crack them open, ghost the software from the small drive to a large one, chuck in a 160gig drive in.... and awya you go with 160gig of mp3 space...

TWICE as much as mine!

 

[adaml]

If it's a standard size hard drive ... then sureeley you would be able to not only hat swap them between cars... but ALSO crack them open, ghost the software from the small drive to a large one, chuck in a 160gig drive in.... and awya you go with 160gig of mp3 space...

TWICE as much as mine!

I suspect there may be more in there than a drive.

Did some reading on the website...

Does the PhatBox or Kenwood Music Keg work with other software packages besides the PhatNoise Music Manager?

The PhatBox/Kenwood Music Keg do not work with directly with other music management software packages, but that the PhatNoise software can incorporate and use songs created or stored with other packages.

This says to me that the interface between the PC and the cartridge may be proprietary, i.e. different to a standard removable storage device.

Maybe there's a chip inside the carts to query the drive's bios chip so it's tied to one size of drive. There's certainly a big markup on those carts compared to lappy hard drives. I know what I'd do if I were in their shoes.

Won't stop me trying though - you can never keep an old hacker down.

Hmm I wonder if there's other cool stuff you can do with them. Maybe get the voice prompts to read out text files for instance.

(adam goes off to google for phatbox hacks...)

(...adam comes back)

Lol! Google "phatbox hacks" and click I feel lucky!

The bad news is it's not a simple job

 

[leonlad]

is the phatbox the same the same size as the standard 6 cd changer ?
would it just slot in the space in the glove box ?
also are there brackets with it to ?

 

[EddyH]

It's the same size but the cartridge sticks out, the glovebox still closes though. Have a look at the photo I posted in the first post on this thread.

There are no brackets supplied.

 

[aaronbromley]

I had to drill some holes into the back of my glove box to allow for the cables sticking out the rear of the unit, it fits, just.
Is the MK1 Leon CD changer cable the only one which will make it work?, i bought a VW one and it didn't, I'm hoping i can get the correct cable tomorrow.