Update voor navigate met 2018 kaarten!

[N207]

@Remco & Bollman: this topic was started almost a year ago.

Knowing the Covid-19 outbreak has slowed down the process, is there any chance the updates can be installed in the Netherlands within a couple of months or so?

[Remco]

Verder dan een toezegging dat ze hun best doen dit nog dit jaar te gaan doen kom ik op het moment helaas niet, reken zeker niet op de zomer, zal sowieso het najaar worden. Ze zijn erg druk met andere projecten o.a. een SkyBlue TTiD XWD Automaat volledig nieuw opbouwen, een paar dagen naar NL plannen blijkt lastig. Voor de mensen welke toch deze zomer naar Zweden gaan kunnen ze op hun locatie de update wel doen.

[bollman]

As you all probably have figured out: COVID-19 really messed this up.

We have had no way of travel either to Holland nor Germany. BUT, we have not been sitting still
We now have the 2021 update ready with 2 year newer maps!

Also, we are trying to set up a "mail in service". We have published a video detailing how to remove the drive from the car:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_fvVf55oHg

We will return with more information about packaging the drive for safe transport to Sölvesborg where it will be backed up, updated and then sent back.

Our tests show that it is possible to use the car with no drive, although it would be best to leave power off during the update.

Stay tuned for more information!

[J3THPA1N]

Zo te zien is het een IDE hardeschijf. Het eerste waar ik benieuwd naar ben is of er onder ook ruimte is om je hardeschijf ergens anders te plaatsen. Als dat er is zou ik het als volgt doen:

Sata to IDE adapter kopen—>ssd kopen en dan de hardeschijf klonen naar de ssd (kan ook via windows script)

Dat stuk van de kaarten ben ik ook benieuwd naar.
Hoe is de hardeschijf gepartitioneerd? (Fat/fat32/ntfs/zfs etc)

Als je dat weet kun je wellicht in de hardeschijf komen en anders bruteforcen.

Welke leverancier gebruikten ze voor de kaarten?
Het lijkt me dat de kaarten apart staan (nederland bij nederland etc) en niet in tig stukjes opgeknipt is als losse bestandjes.

Dan zou je de bestanden kunnen overschrijven met nieuwe bestanden (kaarten) met dezelfde naam en extensie gehanteerd.

Desnoods via open maps of zo kaarten downloaden en compilen naar hun gangbare extensie.

Ondertussen ben ik bezig met de saabaux aangezien dat ook een bluesaab module is met custom firmware. Maar daar komt nu een 2e setje van binnen zodat ik die rustig uit elkaar kan halen en kijken of ik ervoor kan zorgen dat hij nummers weergeeft tijdens muziek luisteren.

[bollman]

Ok, my Dutch is not that great but I'll try to tell you what I know:

Yes, the drive is PATA (IDE). I have been thinking about replacing the drive with SATA SSD, but it's not that easy.
There's no space, perhaps if you relocate some stuff, but the drive is connected via a very thin cable, not the standard flat cable you find in old computers, and it is exactly the right length. There's no slack to be able to relocate.
It's mounted at the back so you push the drive into the connector and there's no space for a converter.
The Ampera unit actually uses SATA-drives and they are quite similar so it could perhaps be done using parts from an Ampera.

But, what worries me is that since the E800/U803-update, the unit uses the hard drive as a substitute for the broken flash-memory that caused the "Belgium-problem".
We have seen that using a non-original drive makes the unit a lot less stable. My analysis is that they added hard mappings to drive cylinders in the firmware as "memory", and if you use a non-original drive, those mappings may fail and cause data corruption.

There were 2012-updates for sale (third party) and they came on standard laptop harddrives, but it was really hit or miss if your unit would function properly (mostly miss).
That is why we insist on using the original drives (Hitachi Industrial drive), and is why we make a bit-for-bit copy of the hard drive before we touch the contents.
Should your drive break, we can recreate an exact copy.

Also, the drive is locked using a security system built into older hard drives that block access to the drive unless password is supplied. This means that any SATA->PATA or USB converter to read the drive is out of the question. This has been a big issues since we need to source old computers with proper IDE/PATA to even be able to access the drive.
When unlocked, there are 8 partitions using standard FAT filesystem where one contains the navigational software including maps, and one contains the music (if any) and the rest are used for system stuff.

Even after getting into the drive, replacing maps is not at all easy. The maps are in huge files containing maps, voice prompts, routing, POI and so on for the entire covered area. The format of the maps is "KIWI", but there are many different versions of the KIWI-format and the ng9-5 uses a fairly unusual one. There are no known converters for this file format, and to even get the specifications regarding the format requires an agreement with Denso, which is not cheap. Using free maps like OSM is out of the question unless someone is prepared to invest huge amounts of money into licensing and developer time to make such a converter.
And, to complicate stuff even more, there are checksums that need to be matched, compression headers that need to be correct, and loads of other stuff that all has to add up, or the unit gets into a boot-loop.

I have spent an unhealthy amount of time getting this update to work as well as it does (just ask my wife ). Without some "secret sauce" I might not be able to get the final parts working, like the voice control, since this is IBM licensed AVR and I have no access to documentation. I would probably also need to have the Denso developer tools to recompile all files to match up all references. We are trying to get hold of that information, but it is by no means an easy task and no promises can be made.

If you think that the update is expensive, I can assure you that the profit is very low considering the time it has taken to make the update, and the time needed to perform the actual update (about 1,5hrs).

[J3THPA1N]

[]

Well, i don’t have a nav system in my car. I use my wife instead. Saves me the trouble of looking and when i drive wrong i can blame her

So what i see is that there is no way to get an ssd into the car without relocation and even if, you can’t because of the thin cable.

So you need to use the ide drives.

What about this:

https://www.reichelt.nl/nl/nl/transcend ... D_BwE&&r=1

Ssd with ide connection, bye bye mechanical failures.

As for the harddrive security and files etc. Is Cloning an option?

There are tons of tools out there and cloning is 1 on 1 with all the stuff on it. But then again i don’t know if it’s possible or not.

[bollman]

Oh, Transcend still make those, funny. I have one 32GB for an old Mac
Well, the problem is that the size is different, and the addressing of the SSD might not match up with the spinning drive and cause problems.
So far, we have seen no hardware failure on the drives. They are industrial grade, slow spinning, made for long term use in harsh environments.
If they are not subjected to "crazy stuff", they should last, but for how long? No idea.
It's not difficult to find those drives though, I think Hitachi still makes them.

Cloning is very much possible, it's what we use to make a bit-by-bit copy (dd under unix).

[J3THPA1N]

[]I thought that you get an performance boost by 20/30% using an ssd. And speedbumps+mechanical drives is not a good combo.

Also i thought that storage capacity difference doesnt matter because the harddrive needs to be formatted first anyway. As long as its in the right partition and allocation size.

Also the maps get larger because of new roads being created so storage limitation isnt affected also i believe.

What programming language do they use for the navigation apps?

[bollman]

Well, the drives are made for harsh environments, they are nothing like standard drives. They can handle vibrations and heat/cold way better than standard drives.
Standard SSDs might not work very well due to the varying voltage and occasional power spikes that are prone to happen in cars.
The speed doesn't really matter afaik, the navi unit can't process data that quick anyways, the CPUs are old and slow, with limited I/O performance.

The problem we face is the E800/U803-update which as far ass I can tell uses exact cylinders on the drive to relocate the failed flash memory. This is not dependent on formatting the drive, it bypasses all that and writes to specific locations on the drive according to program. That is the reason it doesn't work very well with other drives than the original one. All drives have hardware specific cylinder/head-configurations and I know for a fact that replacing the standard 40GB drive with a laptop 60GB drive makes the unit upset and "forgetful", so, replacing it with an SSD might make the unit sad.

The 2012 units got a larger 60GB drive with 20GB for storing music as opposed to the 2010-2011 10GB. The map partition is equally sized on both units.
The "OS" of the unit is not very advanced and rely a lot more on specifics than more general operating systems. They were never ment to be modified but rather, due to limited resources (CPU power, RAM and so on) very "unit-specific" and tailored exactly for what was installed.

The maps are in KIWI-format, as I said before. This is a standard, but not an open standard.

The unit itself is running 2 MIPS CPUs with an operating system written specifically for them by Denso. They are called "Naviem" and are rebranded Toshiba TX49 MIPS.
The OS is modular and consists of "modules" that relate to the specific unit. For example: in the US units, the OS contains software for controlling the XM radio. This module is not present in the EU versions.
I have tried to decompile the OS to learn more, but that is unfortunately beyond my capability. I would need to study MIPS and reverse engineering to get anywhere.

[funsticks]

Patrik thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. We communicated earlier about sending the hard disk to Mannes. I see you getting serious now. But I'm still planning to come over...
Would it be possible to copy the content of the original disk to a similar one after performing the update? The cars are getting older and I would have a spare one in case the original one crashes.

[Champers]

[]Since they are using Linux dd to make a bit-for-bit copy of the hard drive, it should be a non-issue to save a (compressed) copy of this hard drive image to a USB stick (or another drive) for backup reasons.
You can 't use that stick or drive directly in the car, but at least you'll have an image of the car's hard disk as a backup.

If you can restore and use the image to an identical hard drive in case the original fails is another question.
As long as the drive's serial number isn't married to the car unit that should work though.

Meanwhile I'll go digging in my pile of old laptops and PC's for one with a PATA controller

[Champers]

Ik ga proberen of het ook ergens bij een ex-Saab garage in NL gedaan kan worden - onder licentie ofzo. Ik denk dat er hier in Nederland én België voldoende zijn die deze fijne update ook zouden willen. Laat mij (via PB of in een reactie in dit topic) weten of je mogelijk interesse hebt - dat helpt vast om de mannen van Bilservice te overtuigen om een dealer/hub in NL te hebben.

Count me in for a map update !
I'm in Belgium and pretty good with Linux and stuff so if Mannes is looking for a local tech to do testing/debugging/installing, they're free to contact me

Regards,
Bart

[rutgerreinier]

https://youtu.be/F_MM2iUPMCE

Niet alles hierboven gelezen, maar misschien hebben jullie hier iets aan...

[Champers]

https://youtu.be/F_MM2iUPMCE

Niet alles hierboven gelezen, maar misschien hebben jullie hier iets aan...

Lijkt me dat H. Blom een image van Mannes kopieert naar een nieuwe harde schijf en die opstuurt.
Dat zou betekenen dat hij een manier heeft gevonden om de originele schijven te unlocken, waarna het een eitje is om er een image met nieuwe navigatie op te pompen.
Dat kan natuurlijk perfect maar op deze manier ben je wel de muziek en alle settings kwijt die op je eigen originele harde schijf staan.
170 euro is natuurlijk geen geld.

[bollman]

We are now live with mail-in service!
Contrary to "someone else" we upgrade your drive so you can keep music, places, and other things on your drive.
Link to more info on how is at the bottom of this page:
http://www.mannesbilservice.se/tjanster ... 2010-2011/