Thread: W221 m.y. 2009 Command duyng - budget wrecker?

Hi all!

I am a pc tehnican in a company and I virtually do anything - service laptops, pc's and electronics.
Yesterday my boss comes to me with a sad face - navigation (and pretty much everything else) on his S350 started dying. The symtoms are:
A week ago the clock in the navi started keeping back and system did not save set time after restart (ignition off). A couple days ago the unit stopped booting - shows merc logo and blanks and logo again and so on.
He also got quoted ~5k Eur for a new unit. I know, it is a Mercedes, but for the love of God, it is a system, far behind Pioneer Avic, which costs around 1k.
Are there any specialists on this matter? Since the sistem works from hdd, I have very strong suspicion, the case is a dead hdd. I could only hope that when MB dealer removes the system, I can figure out the problem myself.

Doesnt the car have 3 years warranty ?

Talk to sales@comandonline.co.uk - they may be able to get a Mercedes used unit with guarantee (from Mercedes), but even used units are not at all cheap

Cheers

R

Originally Posted by richard

Doesnt the car have 3 years warranty ?
R

Sadly, it is m.y. 2006. Got confused with papers...
If it would be only navigation, wouldn't spend even 100 Pounds on it, but since it controls heating, clima and pretty much everything else... we're stuck...

Finally had time to remove the unit and check it out.
Here goes the list of important parts:
Harddrive - Hitachi 2.5" IDE 20Gb
DVD - Fujitsu
CPU - Xilinx
OS- QNX Rtos V4.x
Filesystem on Harddrive - qnx4-fs
Would be a shame to donate some thousand pounds to Mercedes just because of dead harddrive.
The one I am trying to revive is still working - got a full image to another, using qnx 6.5 live cd and a pc.
If the filesystem will be to damaged, I will have to search for someone, who wants to get some spare cash in exchange for harddrive image.
System is rather similar to Dodge's entertainment system and a bit to BMW iDrive. Nothing too fancy there.
Most of the programming is done in Ukraine... yes, in Ukraine...
Still feel like paying 5k Pounds for that system?

COMAND ONLINE sell the hard drive.

Originally Posted by BenzModz

COMAND ONLINE sell the hard drive.

..probably, only to well-known clients.

Anyone able to get a hdd image for me for a reasonable paypal award? Not a hard task to do and will take only half hour of your time and some 10-20 gigs of internet to upload and everyone will benefit from repair howto in case of harddrive failure.
I am more than sure that those drives will be dying more and more as time goes for the first W221 cars.
I think the best would be to replace them with 32gig CF card + laptop ide adapter.

Originally Posted by january

..probably, only to well-known clients.

Anyone able to get a hdd image for me for a reasonable paypal award? Not a hard task to do and will take only half hour of your time and some 10-20 gigs of internet to upload and everyone will benefit from repair howto in case of harddrive failure.
I am more than sure that those drives will be dying more and more as time goes for the first W221 cars.
I think the best would be to replace them with 32gig CF card + laptop ide adapter.

The hard drive is a spare part.

Originally Posted by BenzModz

The hard drive is a spare part.

Could you pm the price to me then, because I contacted Commandonline and got only offer to repair it. Not a bad offer too, but since my country coverage in this navigation is poor to say the least, I am trying to spend as little as possible on it.

Originally Posted by january

Could you pm the price to me then, because I contacted Commandonline and got only offer to repair it. Not a bad offer too, but since my country coverage in this navigation is poor to say the least, I am trying to spend as little as possible on it.

Spend Class = S-Class

If you are trying to save money then I think we already started with the wrong car.

Originally Posted by BenzModz

Spend Class = S-Class
If you are trying to save money then I think we already started with the wrong car.

We do not save money on maintenance, fuel, tires, oils, etc., but I would not spend money on device, that is not really functional, even when working completely.
Yes, I do understand that people, who buy S-class are rich, but they are in no way dumb and the way they bought this car is by managing their money wisely.
I guess, it is the same thing about S-class and Apple products - they are cool because they are cool and it has nothing to do with quality - pure style.
About car being wrong - you are probably right - after thinking about those couple years of owning this Merc, I do not think that our company had to bare all these unnecessary costs just because we needed a represent-able car. S-class is in no way as dependable and good as it was in 90ties and I think, everyone will admit that.