AcuraCar99

Hello All,
I've seen treads about the hard drive navi units. I've heard from a friend that Sandisk makes an adapter that would work on our car's Navi Unit but i have been unable to confirm this. I was also told the the John Eagle Acura dealer in Houston,TX uses these products from san disk to replace the hard drive with the adapter. I called them and as usual they had no idea about what i was talking about.... If you have anymore information please hit me up with the 411!!!!

AcuraCar99

Well i got another harddrive thanks to my friend Kman156, I tried it and it worked for about 15min and then the same problem. DISK READ ERROR. I feel it's my reader. Oh well back to the drawing board...

JeffNY

I assume this is for a '99 TL Navi? If the hard drive failed you can get a new one on ebay for $39 (see below). Problem is getting your map data on the new drive. If you can get the drive connected to your computer and get it working for at least 5 min. you can copy the files off it...then copy them to the new drive. If your CPU is broke you may need to search a junkyard for a new Navi computer....if you have to do this try and get one with a DVD drive for full coverage....

Jeff

See my pages on the HD Navi...
http://home.earthlink.net/~jeffny61/navi.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~jeffny61/...navi/maps.html

A Calluna 520MB PCMCIA on sale on ebay for $39
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=42191

paulmooney

I have it working in my car.

See...

http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/99_acura_tl_navi/

AcuraCar99

I almost wasted $200 on a new hard drive, so for two hardrives not to work, it's not likely. I'm trying to see if my friend can do a scam with his buddy at the dealership to swap out my reader for a working one with no money out of my pocket.

paulmooney

Can you email me the details and perhaps we can figure out what is wrong. Did you format the drives with XP? That will prevent the drive from working in the nav unit.

AcuraCar99

Negative! Let's put it this way i havemy original drive then i had a friend send me his bot were reformatted from Acura and placed in the unit, they both work for about 2 hours then the blue and yellow screen. I place the other one, it wold work every now and then. it was out more than it was working. The maps took very long to load. This is why i thought it was the reader and not the HD Drive...

paulmooney

Do the drives work in a notebook?

I don't think the acura machines actually format the drives so you may want to do so and try again after formatting FAT in a Windows 9x, or 2000 system.

I'm still betting its a drive failure.

Where are you located?

I have extra drives if you want to do some tests, or mail me a failing drive and let me try to get it working.

There is a 1999 nav unit for sale on ebay right now. It says 2000 but its not dvd, or you could locate and adapt a DVD unit to replace yours.

Don't give up.

Paul

NICEUP

What is the latest navi update for the 99tl?
Anybody knows?

paulmooney

Dec 2002 map ver ADB085 system ver 2.01

more info here...
http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/99_acura_tl_navi/

AcuraCar99

I'm not giving up, it's just that by process of elimination it has to be the reader. Ulsee it is that the disk needs to be formatted and then reloaded with the information.

Symptoms:
Slow loading the maps.
Disk Read error after leaving the car of and then turn it back on.
Tried a new disk and same error occurs.
as a PC technician i would deduct that it the reader.

Paul anything you can do to help i appreciate...

AcuraCar99

I'd like to give a shout out to PAULEMOONEY for helping me with my Navi unit. i bought a CompactFlash drive like he describes on his web site and it worked great navi back in business.

Great looking out Paulemooney.
If we could assign cool points here i would give over a thousand to him because that's how much i saved in buying a compactflash drive.

PAULEMOOEY is the man!!!!!!!

paulmooney

Thanks for the thumbs up! I think what is happening is older disk drives don't spin up as fast. I've seen Callunas that work in a PC not work in the navi. The navi unit may not retry or have a configurable read timeout. If you use CompactFlash drives instead they seem to always work.

http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/99_acur...avi/index.html

Paul

AcuraCar99

It could be that or as one of the sites said that the drive failure is also caused by the drive over heating anf causes a hardware failure. I did notitce that my harddrive would get real hot. On top of the temperature in the trunk on a hot sunny day...
I too would reccommend the compac flash card...

TedH

Just a public msg to express my thanks to and recommed Paul Mooney. I had probems with my 99TL Nav System and took it to the dealer. Cost to replace $1300 which was outrageous. I contacted Paul Mooney and he supplied a new disk with maps for my area at a price of $185. Received the disk within 3 days and just plugged it into the system and it's up and running. You can contact Paul at his web site www.angelfire.com. Thanks again Paul.

AcuraCar99

Did you get the compactflash or another harddisk?

paulmooney

Compactflash. Also prices keep dropping from the memory suppliers so a replacement disk is down to about $150.

http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/99_acura_tl_navi/

Paul

258kTL

Hey guys, Just bought a 1999 Acura TL (258,000 miles) and looking to get the navigation working. System seems to work as I can see controls and AC and such but getting the Hard Drive error message. I bought a PCMCIA adapter and SD card to fix it but cannot get the old files off the hard drive. Any ideas if the files are available for download online somewhere? I talked to my dealer and they said they could not help me out at all. Will pay beer money to help with the files, really hope to get it sorted out.

Thanks,
Mike