The physical damage to the IC (Integrated Circuit) is probably not significant as the actual chip is well inside the moulding but it's intriguing how it got damaged.

Good Luck.

Thanks for that.

Now I'm not sure if you are going to believe this but 20 minutes ago my Columbus was in quite a few pieces on the floor of my lounge. I've now put it back together and installed it in the car.

Guess what.

It works!!!!!

Not sure for how long or why but it's currently working.

Photos to follow.

Now go out and buy yourself a lottery ticket, because with luck like that you are on a roll.

I have read this thread with intetest. Firstly good news, glad it might be working for you.

I wonder if the unit stalled on a cd/dvd read of some kind in its previous car and retained the info in memory. That might explain why it was starting in some sort of cd/dvd read mode. By disconnecting things maybe you cleared the memory.

When the unit fired up today saying loading cd/dvd did this go of it's own accord or when you pressed media?

Whatever one for the memory bank in case similar occurs to someone else...

When it loaded up today it said loading cd/DVD on its own accord.

Good news is that it is still working today and I've been able to load the NZ maps in it. All appears to be fine. Fingers crossed it stays that way but as said above I'll go out and buy a lottery ticket for sure!

Further update to this. I updated the firmware today with no issues. Reason for doing so was to sort out some niggles with BT streaming.

I've also bought a lottery ticket for tonight's draw as per the above, fingers crossed!