I have been seeing quite a few posts on the third-gen "square" Nano crashing when used in the PCM on 997.2 cars. Well, my Nano used to crash most of the time that I started the car up. A few times it nearly "bricked" and nothing seemed to help the problem. I wound up getting a tip from a Porsche tech that has so far solved my issue entirely. He told me to put the backlight setting on the Nano to the longest interval. It appears that when the backlight triggers off, the PCM has some sort of a glitch and crashes the iPod. (or the iPod crashes itself?) It seems to take the PCM 10-20 seconds to communicate with the iPod successfully, and if the backlight is set at 30 seconds, the crash never happens. I can't promise that this will work for everyone, but it made my P-car experience much more enjoyable without having to connect my Nano every time I get in the car! Let me know if anyone has any success with this idea too!

 

** runs to car to adjust Nano settings **

 

I also have it - could you please tell (as I am an iPod idiot) - what specific setting in iPod menu is it? Under what section?

 

Hi! I am not where I can get to the nano right now, but I believe that you go under 'settings' and there is a scroll down to nearly the bottom. You should find 'backlight' there and times that go as high as 30 secs.
Right now, you are probably in the area where you are playing songs, so you have to hit the 'menu' butting until it takes you back to the earliest menu on the menu tree.

 

this is the screen! (but on an older ipod) Ignore the old font and monochrome display in the pic.

 

John,

I can't thank you enough for sharing this tip. My iPod has always.......I mean *always* had to be unplugged and plugged back in after starting the car to get PCM3.0 to recognize it. I reset the backlight from 5 seconds to 20 second and so far so good.

It may be too soon to say for certain that this solved my problem completely, but turning the car off and on several times throughout the day today I never once had an issue with PCM3.0 recognizing the iPod right away and that's definitely a first in 3 months of ownership.

And this is after two trips to my OPC with no success in finding a fix.

Mad rep power points for this one!

Thank you!

 

Thanks for the the thanks!
I hope it is a permanent fix, because it was driving me crazy. So far it has been working for me for a week or so, and when I figured it could be a plausible permanent fix, I posted the info. It would be funny if the solution to the problem was this simple!
Anyway, Let me know if it works out over the long term.

 

I'll post back after a few days......or weeks depending on the weather

If it truly was that simple after all the trips to the local OPC and so many times unplugging and plugging......well, I'll just be glad to finally have the problem resolved and will be sure to share the info with the local Porsche dealership/service center. I imagine a lot of folks are having this same issue.....people who don't read the forums.

Thanks again.