Urgent help needed to resuscitate Columbus impersonating brick

[richws]

Urgently appreciate any advice/guidance on resuscitation of my semi-functional brick (aka Columbus) I intend to post this on both Briskoda & VWNavi)

Background follows (mainly cut from previous mails):

Have (originally) rev A Columbus in MY07 Octavia with early gateway: Columbus was originally hw4 & sw1004 - with sw 1024 ( I think ) when puchased & installed to replace Nexus. All worked fine inc. mfsw & maxidot.

Sucessfully updated to 2720/1200 A/B/C but MFSW wasn't working and maxidot only partially. Then succesfully updated to 1300 A/B/C for Skoda and. MFSW and Maxidot fine. Have I now installed a version giving a battery drain problem for 1st time?

Established that unfortunately my car is very early MY07 (Oct06) and I got the following as what I believe is CAN Gateway is: 1K0907530H. This came from VAG diagnostics printout - got it checked post-installation and before starting firmware upgrades.

Attempted update to 2760/1200 for A/B/C after swapping PKTABLE/SKTABLE files before updating to get MFSW and Maxidot working. More info about swapping these files is there - http://vwnavi.com/showthread.php/100...ll=1#post37244

This repeatedly failed, was initially able to reinstall 2720/1200 but no more.

Now have :

red/blue coloured screen displays, initially German but English reselection worked

Seemingly fully operational Map/Nav/Traffic Announcements: can enter & display routes etc

Stored destinations still there

Seemingly lost all MP3 off HD & radio prestets

No radio/SD/HDD sound

Can copy from SD to HDD and display MP3 as on HDD

Hidden menu has now seemingly deactivated but was previously showing no sw version ie “-“ in field.

Clock showing on Display, speed limit selection box present so at least elements of sw running is 2720/2760

Seemingly consistent end point of any sw upgrade/downgrade attempt is message stating: HOST fragment Read (presumably this is familiar to some out there?)

I have discs burnt for 0900 (used repeatedly and recognised), 1100, 2720/1200 (used repeatedly and recognised) & 2760/1200 with PK/SKTable swap done & official 6.1 Maps disc

I suspect table swap may have been initial issue.

I have been careful whilst burning discs using Nero and MagicISO/UltraISO. I’ve burnt both cdr & DVDs on slowest speeds and, whilst I’m willing to “reburn & try†I’d like to know that others have got past the error shown by this method.

Look forward to receiving sympathy & +ve suggestions (preferably detailed).

Many Thanks

[vRS Carl]

Use this firmware

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JG148IV6

It is 276X and is ready to go. There is no need to modify anything. Sounds like you may have messed something up when you did the Sq/PQTable swap.

If it was bricked it would be asking for a firmware disc all the time not giving the functionality you currently have.

Carl

[vRS Carl]

Also there was a AD Revison gateway in the for sale section for £70.

That will be perfect for you. Your current gateway will give you problems

[richws]

Also there was a AD Revison gateway in the for sale section for £70.

That will be perfect for you. Your current gateway will give you problems

Thanks for tip on Gateway Carl and your swift response.

As for upgrade I need to stay (currently) with versions that won't introduce battery drain. I have 0900 and 1100 downloaded, 0900 has failed to load (as described in original post) several times with Fragment read error.

Any oher ideas?

[vRS Carl]

You may struggle to degrade the FW without enabling the option.

It is in the test menu if you can get to it. Its within the last option and says something like "enable SW downgrade"

[Raglits]

I though you could downgrade just by putting the older firmware cd/dvd in and then rebooting the Columbus?

Edit: Knew I'd seen something somewhere

Try the following key combination "Setup + Eject + i"

(i being the button on the top right of the unit) and hopefully this will allow for a downgrade...

Edited 7 January, 2011 by Raglits

[richws]

Update (Briskoda/VWNavi):

Looks less optimistic than I thought.

Last 2 times (at Least) when starting up Columbus from "cold" (ie after few hours of non-use/overnight) it goes straight into sw update mode and is searching for image. Seems like this is it's natural default state at the moment.

Pretty confident I can still get back to the limited functionality I described in initial post (managed that several times) and hidden menu has returned - still shows "-" in sw version so could try things out/get data from menu in that space if there are any ideas out there. This state, however doesn't "stick".

I intend to check (from Josi's info) whether 1100 is "Factory update" ie will fully reset the machine and if so do a slow dvd burn and try to update/downgrade to that. Failing that I'm out of ideas.

Feedback from anyone, particularily who managed to recover from similar states is very welcome & needed.

Replacing the motherboard has been mentioned. Is this something a service is offered for (if so who/how much? - no way I' could do that myself)?