Hello all,

 

See if i can get any info on this question.

Behind the head unit front facia there is a HDD with a firewire 400 / 4 pin socket.

After much research I bought the firewire to firewire cable. 

Firewire socket on the head unit connect to firewire on the laptop.  

Also tried firewire socket on head unit to thunderbolt/firewire adapter to macbook thunderbolt.

Tried the Mac Osx desktop and the Windows desktop environments.

 

(Firewire to usb cables are a con they don't work)

 

Turned the ignition on to power up head unit (Panasonic nhzn w57)

Can anyone tell me is there is a software program that will recognise the head unit HDD and show it on the computer desktop, like an external drive?

So i can transfer files straight to the head unit HDD?

 

It is, after all a hard drive in a head unit. No different to one in a laptop or desktop machine. Or plugging in an external HDD to your machine.

 

You can transfer files from a cd / dvd  / sd card to it. So theoretically connecting a laptop should work too.

Implications of cd data is 700mb, dvd data is 4.7gb and max sd card this unit takes is 2GB.

The Toyota dealers must have some basic windows based software that recognises its connected to the vehicles head unit, otherwise there would be no firewire connector on the head unit.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Edited March 16, 20232 yr by tsam19
Info clarity

When you plug it into the computer, does it come up as an unknown device? Do you see  anything with an exclamation mark in device manager?

Just to re-clarify to the readers. Plugged in the cable(s) to head unit and laptop. 

Tried with head unit powered on. 

Tried with head unit powered off.

Laptop not showing any connected devices in both head unit on/off.

Laptop recognises the cables attached i.e install driver messages onscreen. Device manager cables firewire / thunderbolt recognised.

 

There's a hard drive in the head unit. 

Connecting a firewire cable should access the hard drive.

But it doesn't.

 

Its the same working principal as a computer, you power on, the power energises the internal hard drive, making it accessible.

 

Hence the original question; what software does Toyota dealership use or what generic software program is there, that recognises that the laptop is connected to an external hard drive? 

 

Because thats what it is, an external hard drive in a car stereo head unit.

 

The last resort is to remove head unit, dismantle and remove hard drive from it and connect via a caddy and then reassemble.....

 

Also very interested to hear if anyone solved this one.

You can't, I've been through the coding on this unit. It's just for firmware upgrades within the OS of the head unit. You can't actually download anything on the hard disk. I feel your pain I was trying to get hold of Toyota Japan and see if i can get the base code for the unit so I can alter it for the UK market. However they won't let saying its protected software. The only way is to remove the hard drive from the unit itself and jack it directly into a pc.

That’s great to know. Thanks so much for doing that research, much appreciated!

If you press the menu button one next to open and turn lights on three time a menu comes up and one of the pages is IEEE menu if you use google translate it’s the read, download, upload menu