[CarAbuser]

Hi,

I have a couple of niggles in my CIC unit that annoy the hell out of me when playing music from the HD. I believe these are bugs within the CIC music application so my first instinct is to update the unit. I know this is a big job that requires a charger and ICOM/B so before I go to that expense I'd like to know if there are actually any updates available for the CIC.

After reading my current module status in INPA it looks like I have the following HW and ZB numbers for the three CIC related modules:

Module | HW Number | ZB Number
CI62F1 | 9284325 | 9284327
CI63F1 | 9283417 | 9283418
CIA0F1 | 9284329 | 9284329

I know that CI62F1 is the gateway unit so this should have no effect on my issue. But does anyone know which of the other two modules would be responsible for the actual backend operating system of the CIC unit? And also would anyone be able to tell me if there is an updated version?

[FaxData]

Can you do a read and write to your CIC with NCS Expert? It will tell you the actual version number. It starts by saying "CIC.C08" but then updates to the correct version. CIC.C1A is the latest.

[CarAbuser]

Originally Posted by FaxData

Can you do a read and write to your CIC with NCS Expert? It will tell you the actual version number. It starts by saying "CIC.C08" but then updates to the correct version. CIC.C1A is the latest.

It's definitely C1A, I did some NCS Expert coding and that was the name of the file I had to code.

Do you know how that C1A name relates to the ZB numbers?

[FaxData]

I do not, but C1A is the latest version. There’s no further firmware to upgrade to.

I’m not the best at diagnosing subtle problems with the CIC, but what are your symptoms? Definitely some of the forum members here have had their hard drives fail in the CIC, if your issue is restricted to the hard drive then that might be your problem.

[CarAbuser]

Originally Posted by FaxData

I do not, but C1A is the latest version. There’s no further firmware to upgrade to.

I’m not the best at diagnosing subtle problems with the CIC, but what are your symptoms? Definitely some of the forum members here have had their hard drives fail in the CIC, if your issue is restricted to the hard drive then that might be your problem.

Really minor problems but they annoy me!

The main one is that periodically when playing music from the HDD it will just go silent. It seems to have some sort of glitch when loading the next song and will just sit at 00:00 on whichever song it fails on for about 30 seconds before switching over to the radio. If I navigate back to HDD music then it will do the same thing again. There's no pattern to which songs it does it with and it only happens once every few weeks but a full power cycle of the CIC is required to get the music back.

Other errors include it just saying "Please wait" in the currently playing selection if current playing is the default screen when it boots up. This can be fixed my navigating back to the folder browser then back into "currently playing".
Another is that after creating a search for music it just sits on the first song and won't let me select others in the list. I have to navigate back out and click "start search" again.

I've tried re-importing all my music which had no effect. I've also since upgraded the CIC hard drive to an SSD drive and the problems still persist so I'm certain it's not disk related.

I'm certain that all these faults are contained within whichever media browser application runs on the CIC. I have seen a thread about connecting to the CIC using ENET and browsing the contents of the unit so I'm very tempted to have a browse through the application folders and see what can be done in the back end.

[FaxData]

Hmm, weird, I thought the SSD thing would fix (or cause) problems but I guess not since it sounds like they predate the drive. I would suggest asking in the iDrive forum for further help...

BTW ENET should work fine to browse the filesystem since (I presume) you have a factory-installed CIC, but if ENET doesn't work for you then you can connect via the USB in the glovebox. You need a USB to ethernet adapter with the ASIX AX88772 chipset; I bought this one off amazon and have used it successfully (dunno if they ship to UK though).

EDIT: As I think more about this, I wonder if the first problem has something to do with the files you're playing... Have you noticed any specific files (or upcoming files) causing the problems more frequently? High bitrate, long file name (or names with unusual characters), etc?

[CarAbuser]

Originally Posted by FaxData

Hmm, weird, I thought the SSD thing would fix (or cause) problems but I guess not since it sounds like they predate the drive. I would suggest asking in the iDrive forum for further help...

BTW ENET should work fine to browse the filesystem since (I presume) you have a factory-installed CIC, but if ENET doesn't work for you then you can connect via the USB in the glovebox. You need a USB to ethernet adapter with the ASIX AX88772 chipset; I bought this one off amazon and have used it successfully (dunno if they ship to UK though).

EDIT: As I think more about this, I wonder if the first problem has something to do with the files you're playing... Have you noticed any specific files (or upcoming files) causing the problems more frequently? High bitrate, long file name (or names with unusual characters), etc?

Thanks for the input, I appreciate your thoughts on the issue.

The USB adapter was my next step since it has a fixed IP rather than using ENET and messing about with DHCP. I found an adapter already: https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Ethe...dp/B00MYT47EA/

With the files there seems to be no pattern. I did think along the same lines and removed all special characters. Bitrate and format aren't an issue since the CIC converts all songs that are imported to a different file format with a fixed bitrate.

I was partly hoping that someone else would come along and say "yeh those problems are normal, everyone has them" but it just seems like it's only my unit!

[opjose]

The CIC operating system is stored on flash ram, not on other modules.

The iLevel update also reflashes the OS if required.

Your symptoms, given the HDD swapout, sound like hardware issues or that you have a bad or corrupt partition that was replicated to the SSD.

[opjose]

Btw

Have you tried taking the HDD out of the equation by dumping a bunch of .mp3 files into folders on a USB stick and playing from there?

[FaxData]

Originally Posted by CarAbuser

I was partly hoping that someone else would come along and say "yeh those problems are normal, everyone has them" but it just seems like it's only my unit!

The only problem I have that you have is how it's stuck on "Please wait" at bootup from time to time. I'm using bluetooth via combox, and my phone shows an active connection. So maybe that's a problem common to the CIC? I've never imported music so I can't replicate the other issues.

[CarAbuser]

Originally Posted by FaxData

The only problem I have that you have is how it's stuck on "Please wait" at bootup from time to time. I'm using bluetooth via combox, and my phone shows an active connection. So maybe that's a problem common to the CIC? I've never imported music so I can't replicate the other issues.

It's possible that this is a bug present in the CIC then. Most people don't store much music on the HDD but my car is a 2009 that came without combobox so no streaming or playing from USB for me.

Originally Posted by opjose

Btw

Have you tried taking the HDD out of the equation by dumping a bunch of .mp3 files into folders on a USB stick and playing from there?

I don't have a combobox so I can't test it.

I was hoping to work out where the actual music player app is stored, on the HDD or on the flash ROM within the CIC. When I work that out I can see if there's an updated version of the software available in the latest SPDaten for that module.

[opjose]

As I understand it the CIC "operating system" is a monolithic kernel.

There are no "apps" that you can program or replace. This is often done in embedded single purpose systems for performance and storage reasons.

Rather the entire system is loaded from flash at boot as one.

As others have mentioned the C1A update was the last one produced.

At best you could try reloading C1A with the proper cables though I doubt this will cure the issues you noted.

I used a good amount of HDD stored music for awhile and never saw these symptoms.