I couldn't have said it better and also SonarTech, thanks Hopefully you guys can find out even more codes.

 

Since more than one code is known and they all seem to do the same thing, has anyone tried entering the codes in combination? Is it even possible to do so: enter one code, then once you get in using that code, enter another to see if it brings up a second set of menus?

Mike

 

Progress is made! Congratulations, especially to ein Tier, but also to all that have spent time hacking away at this. And thanks to SonarTech and the folks on other forums that have worked on the same problem.

Just as a matter of interest, looking for these codes I did find three places in the GE14 file (part of LOADING.KWI) where they occour:

at 0x2CC258 "660" "295660" "9448"
at 0x3799D8 "81791" "8660" "8295660" "89448"
at 0x478DBC "660" "1791" "295660" "9448"

Of course "8295660" is too big for the 6-position Diag PIN field, so that would be hard to try, but I wonder if the 8 in front would change any of the others?

Now for the bad news. So far (and by no means are we finished) I haven't found anything that looks like an options page that could be used to turn off the undesirable features. If we can figure out the code it will be possible to patch it and turn these off, but that's not nearly as clean a fix.

And T.G.I.F. too!

 

Not yet. That's next on my list. I have some things to say as I'm playing, but the first is, BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THE "TOUCH SCREEN" MENU!!! It's a calibration screen for the nav. I didn't realize this and just pressed the "default" button in the center of the screen.

I had one hell of a time hitting the hidden button again. When you go into that menu, there's a little dot at the upper left. You should touch that, then press it again when it moves to the next corner.

Those who have played with it might want to recalibrate!

[edit]
It looks like we may have found the three screens that TAG-D IT alluded to so long ago. It also seems to back up the Corvette technician who said there wasn't any way to turn on the DVD player or turn off the nagrivation page in those menus. Is there another way? Maybe. I feel like I have to keep reminding everyone, but these are the easiest codes to verify -- when you put them, you fall right into the secret menus. The others, like driving with the navigation wide open require a little bit of testing.

I've posted a few comments about this thread around the areas where I found helpful data. Perhaps by sharing, others will also find codes for their cars -- which might work in ours, or maybe they'll think of something we didn't and blow this thing wide open.

Hey, how's that decompiler coming?

 

Boy did i find THAT out the hard way.

Yep yep yep. "default" is obviously not always "safe" or "good". If you go to the screen, definitely touch the corners and go through with the calibration. *doh*

 

I read that one of the options says auto update. Do you think it is possible that we might have to update our unit with a file (say from a cadillac update disk) and then the DVD code (1791) may be functional with our unit? Don't know much about programming, but am trying to think of possibilities.

Thanks for all the work so far!!

 

 

Something that could be of use is finding all the LOADING.KWI files we can. Perhaps, if we can tell how they differ, we can make further discoveries or just more codes -- which may be reused, as we've seen.

So far, I have the one from our update, and the one from an SRX Cadillac disc. Anybody got any others? If so, pm me and I'll give you my email address.
It's likely we can't run updates for other navs on our unit, and even if we could, we probably wouldn't want to.

Putting another update on our nav system is like saying, "I have this 3800 series engine, do you think I could put it in my Corvette? That update wasn't meant to work with our nav system, and the two units differ significantly. Theirs has twice as many "hard" buttons on the front, many of which have become "soft" buttons in the menu on our unit. However, considering the Grand Prix unit looks identical to ours, it would not surprise me if they could use our updates and vise-versa. The differences between the two are likely superficial. That's if the code will allow it. Notice the LOADING.KWI file contains this little bit: Number Of Accomodated Systems = 1. That means it somehow checks to see which navigation unit it's attempting to update and only updates the ones it's coded to update.

 

Any update?????

 

 

I'm all ears too, French one. Especially if we can find a way to have the system default to the crossed flags as a screen saver after a certain amount of inactivity.

Thanks, for all your hard work guys.

 

No. I got kind of angry because the ECM in my Corvette decided to crap out on me and leave me stranded. GM/OnStar/Chevrolet were no help, they left me on the side of the road with a broken car and no rental.

I had to find an open rental place on my own (OnStar: "No one's open, maybe you can get a friend to chauffeur you around?"), figure out how to get there, and pay for the rental out of my own pocket. OnStar would tow, but only to the dealership where no one was there to recieve the car. So, I had the car towed back to my place, on my nickle, and my wife was able to start it Monday and drive it to the dealership.

For those wondering, this had NOTHING to do with hacking on the navigation system. All of my hacking has been on outside of the car, and I only looked at the menu screens with the exception of calibrating the screen. And these problems started Thursday while I was still thousands of miles away from the car.

Still, the experience has left me with a sour taste in my mouth and I don't even want to look at the Corvette right now, much less drive it or play with it.

However, if Buffy ever writes a decompiler, I'd love to look at it, and I'm still trying to collect LOADING.KWI files.

 

Thanks for your dedication to the cause.

I did read your post on your problems on the road and I can appreciate your frustration with the car and GM/OnStar. Hope you never go through that again.

On the 3 codes that work, it seems to me that 660 & 295660 give the same results, 9448 is also close but with a couple more options being available.

My wish list would be to have full access while moving and to me the gravy would be playing a DVD (although I doubt if that is possible) and to have the Logo come on as suggested by BlackOps (this would seem to be something GM should have made available!).

Perhaps some of my wishes can be had with a hardware modification, ie: on the Denali you can cut the VSS wire to fool the unit into thinking you are stopped thereby giving full access to inputting data.

 

ein Tier, we at the Lexus forums are also looking into
hacking the NAV unit. Ours is the Denso unit as well.
Per your request, I have made available the LOADING.KWI
file from our lataest NAV DVD from an 06 vehicle located here:
http://www.princeton.edu/~jmb/adhoc/LOADING.KWI

The file is 45.8MB. On the face of the CD it says:
2005 Denso Corp
2004 NavTeq
GDI Graphic Data Technology INC
V05.1

I had no problems with copying any of the files on the CD to my
hard drive. Within the LOADING.KWI file, there are sections
in plain text for OS Memory V2.3 99/02/01, OS V1.3 97/04/09,
OS V2.22 05/05/16, as well as other references to OS and C++.
The legal screen is there in plain text as well:
"Watching this screen while the vehicle is in motion can lead to
serious accident. Make selections only while stopped. Some
map data may be incorrect. Read safety instructions in
Navigation Manual. I Agree"

Ours does not have any pins to enter or soft keypads.
Instead, we touch a sequence of unmarked locations in the
corners of the touchscreen while in one of the menu screens.
It then brings you to a maintenance screen. In the maintenance
screen there is a button called "override". Holding this button
for five seconds causes it to change color and will run
the NAV wide open. You can then enter destinations while
moving. To watch DVD's while moving there is a hardware hack that
requires cutting and splicing of 3 wires. It also allows you to
use your Bluetooth address book while moving. We would like to
disable the legal "I Agree" nag screen though.

What I have noticed is that if the NAV CD is removed, it
still retains the I Agree screen. When inserted, it checks for
the proper CD. What I have been told is that if it finds a newer
version, it will load the newer version into the NAV memory.
An interesting thing happens if you disconnect power to
NAV unit for a few minutes. The I Agree screen does not
appear and it reloads memory from the NAV CD as if it
was not in a non-volitile loacation. It cautions not to
turn power off during the process.

I hope that this file gives you some more clues into our
common quest.

 

Hi Tuxlex,

What are you using to open the file with, a Hex Editor?

Thanks,
Don

 

No, just Notepad. It takes a while to open because the
file is so large.

 

Cool, I'll grab the file after work tonight. Maybe it'll invigorate me to work on it some more.

The loading file is the software for your navigation unit. You are correct that it checks for versions, and if the version on the DVD is newer than the one on the nav, it blanks the chip in the unit and rewrites the entire software from scratch. It's very much like updating the BIOS in your motherboard -- except that once you update you can never go back.

However, I was looking in ours before my fiasco, and it appears that there is a screen for "Software Update" or something very similar and it appears that you could force an "update" back to a previous version. This could be useful if we decide to start rewriting the actual software (hey! where's that decompiler?). I was worried about getting into an ever escalating version number if we went down this path.

For 'hacking' on the file in plaintext, I find that Textpad (free download) works better than Notepad. It's a little more robust than Notepad and is faster when working with large files. It also maintains the formatting a little better.

 

By no means am I an expert, but if the unit is checking for an "update" and it won't go backwards, couldn't you take any version you wanted to load and just "change" what version it was in order to "force" an update?

 

Welcome Tuxlex! I would be interested in knowing more details about two things you mentioned: 1) "we touch a sequence of unmarked locations in the corners of the touchscreen while in one of the menu screens. It then brings you to a maintenance screen. In the maintenance screen there is a button called "override". Holding this button for five seconds causes it to change color and will run the NAV wide open. You can then enter destinations while moving." and 2) "To watch DVD's while moving there is a hardware hack that requires cutting and splicing of 3 wires".

I would like to see if either of these might work with our units.

 

Yes, you could. However, that gets into other interesting problems like "what if they release an update, but we don't have access to it?"

There's also the issue if a tech goes in to adjust something and sees that you're on version 2.34 when the latest factory is 1.10. It also means that once you update, you can't truly "reset" back to factory.

It's not big deal, but it is something that could cause problems and we'd be dumb not to recognize that fact.