Today I had time to install the new audio MP3 receiver in my car. I bought this receiver since it offers USB 2.0 and iPod support (according to the information on the web). My plan was to connect my old iPod Mini or a USB hard drive to this receiver.
The installation went smoothly within a few minutes. The user interface is easy to understand and without looking at the manual I was able to select radio stations and store them as preset.
Next I connected my 100GB Seagate USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive. The blue LED of the Seagate drive did not go on at all. So obviously the USB port of the CA-5555i does not provide enough power.
The Seagate comes with a double USB cable with 2 plugs, one for data+power and one just for power. So I plugged the power plug into my laptop and now the blue LED went on. The laptop did not mount the drive and the CA-5555i also displayed USB-Drive, but that was about all. It did not scan the drive for mp3 files. The hard drive has one FAT32 partition and according to the manual, this should be supported. So maybe connecting it to the laptop is a problem, but without a car USB-charger I can’t think of a better way to test it.
The interesting questions would have been, if the CA-5555i supports large USB drives like this one at all and I wonder how many files it can actually handle. As you can see, the manual mentions 200 folders and a maximum of 500 files. Would be nice if those were 500 files per folder, because otherwise it would be pretty useless connecting a regular hard drive or iPod. The manual does not provide any information otherwise about USB storage and iPod support, which is a bit strange since it is being advertised as ‘optimized for iPod’.
Last but not least I connected my old iPod Mini. It started charging but was not mounted as USB-Drive. Since the battery of my iPod Mini is hardly working any longer I was not able to try it with a charged iPod. Because I don’t have a SD/MMC card, I wasn’t not able to test this feature either.
The last image shows the CA-5555i at night.
Update – 2005/02/22:
I connected a different iPod Mini and an iPod Photo 30GB today and both worked fine and I did not notice a file limit. When the iPod is connected, you can not use the iPod controls, just like when you connect it to the computer. Both iPods have been initialized for Windows systems (as far as I know using FAT32). I also tried a CD-RW with ISO 9960 file system and some normal mp3 files but that did not work.
Update – 2005/02/25:
The reason why it did not read the CD-RW was, that the CD drive does not work at all! I would like to send it back but then I would have to send the package all the way to France (bought it at an Dutch online store!) on my own costs, so I am wondering if I need the CD drive at all. Today I also tested a 2GB SD card and it worked well but what I don’t like is the mp3 display and navigation of the CA-5555i. Finding a mp3 while driving would be a dangerous and almost impossible activity. So, the USB port for the iPod might seem like a good idea but it is not really a practical solution.
… to be continued
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