Thread: Alpine KCA-620M: USB interface for Ai-Net

how did you set up a fat32 on an 80 gig. three partitions? i tried for hours

I formatted it as fat32 with Partition Magic Pro. But you can use windows 98 fdisk and format. XP fdisk and format will not allow it.

FAt32 has a maximum file size limitation of 1byte less than 4Gig ..

"The maximum disk size is approximately 8 terabytes when you take into account the following variables: The maximum possible number of clusters on a FAT32 volume is 268,435,445, and there is a maximum of 32 KB per cluster, along with the space required for the file allocation table (FAT)."

Check out this KB .. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463

Hi there,

I just bought the famous USB adapter from Alpine that I wished to connect to my 60 GIG usb harddrive, and it's kinda almost working perfect...I heard about people hearing distortion noises while changing there songs, people having problem browsing through their songs after connecting their hard drive, well I still have some of theses problems but still, i've corrected some.

First, for those who had problems connecting your hard disk to the KCA-620M, first format your Hard drive in FAT32, be sure not to have folders within folders, no more than 255 Folders total, and not more than 255 songs by folder. Then when you connect it, you have to first make the drive spin up, so connect it to an external power source at first, or if you have a USB cable with a second usb cable only designed for alimentation, connect it first and then, when the disk has spin up, connect the usb data cable. Then you should hear your hard drive search through it's whole library. After a while, you should see on your receiver that it tries to play the first song, but here is the problem; The receiver plays the first song of the whole disk, the one that starts with the most prior ascii key ( like ! or 1 or (space)) but then you have to mess with the FOLDER SEARCH and FILE SEARCH in order to be able to make your Head unit understand that you have files within folders and sometime you have to mess for 1 - 2 minutes to make it work, sometime, you have to start you car again...(not cool and not solved yet by me).
Another thing is the noise that you hear when you change songs. I tried to figure what could be the cause of this, and I found it! You have to change all the id3v2 tags of your mp3 to id3v1 and than delete the id3v2 tag from them. There is some sort of software that do this with big batch of MP3's.

Well, if you have an idea how to make the head unit understand faster the presence of files within folders, to evitate problems when loading, please post your solution!

Thanks a lot, and I hope I helped some people out.

Have a good day

Felix

The id3v1 versus id3v2 is a result of how the tags are stored. id3v1 puts them at the end, id3v2 at the beginning. If a player is not aware of how id3v2 works, it will treat the tag as audible data and "play" it, hence the noise.

This is just one more example of the poorly written software the KCA-620M uses! id3V2 has been out a while, my 2001 Archos, which I wanted the KCA-620M to replace, handled it just fine. Let's also mention that my 2004 CDA-9835 has no problems with it on MP3 CD's!

Of course, the KCA-620M does not even recognize id3v1. I never see any tags on the KCA-620M!

I still don't understand how Alpine can drop the ball on something that is so simple, at least for other (and some would have argued, lesser) manufacturers.

I am MOST unhappy as well. Filled up an 8 GB Corsair GT survivor with MP3's (128 kb) and found that at the start of every single song, I hear sporadic noise as if it is reading the ID tags as audio. After various attempts to get this to work by changing the tag versions, I finally took music off an MP3 CD that plays just fine in the head unit, directly copied same to the USB drive then tried to play THESE songs. Same problem. Well into the night I decided to see if I could play WMAs and found this seems to work (still build my thumb drive again at this time). Like previously mentioned, it does NOT read the ID tags for either WMAs or MP3s, just listing the file name. Does not even do that reliably, sometimes sticking a .V10 at the end of the file or just displaying .V10.

Another oddity I noticed. If you have problems getting the system to read you thumb drive, try putting it on a USB cable extension. Initially I was doing same with my 8 GB drive since where the cable was mounted interfered with my shift pattern. When I tried to plug the USB drive directly into the supplied cable, the drive was not powered and of course was not found. Likewise and older 512 MB drive I had was also not powered up when I plugged it directly into the supplied cable.

If anyone has had success in getting the KCA-620M to work with MP3 files on a USB drive, please detail the tools, settings etc used to get this to work. I really don't want to maintain two sets of file formats and Microsoft's Media player is pretty poor for allowing me to setup a file folder / file name format I want so I can maximize the limited capability of this poor excuse for a MP3/WMA interface unit.

Should have gone JVC <sigh>.

Addendum...

Read through all the posts in this thread and noted the comment about removing the id3v2 tags. Will try that later today..

How could Alpine drop the ball so badly in this instance? And people wonder why sales on tech items are limited to a minority of the population. If you cannot support even the most basic standards do you really expect to make a profit on an item? I made the mistake of not researching this purchase as much as I usually do... now *I* have to pay the price. It might go back in a few days.

Hmm...what kind of drive do you use? Is that a USB key or an HDD, because now I make my HDD work perfectly and I found a way to make it work everytime i start my car, tell me more about your actual problem

Check the message ... it's in there.

"... an 8 GB Corsair GT survivor..."

It's a flash drive.

Not sure what problem you are specifically talking about. The biggest one I have is it starts from the beginning every time I turn my car on. Tried switching off it (to tuner or CD) prior to turning the car off. After turning the car back on and switching back, it starts from the first file on the disk. Of course it also starts from the beginning of the drive if I just turn the ignition off while the USB is playing. Only way it "remembers" where it left off is if you are playing music off the USB drive, switch to either the turner or CD then switch back (without turning the ignition off).

Interestingly, if you switch to the CD (with an MP3 CD in it), turn the car off, then turn the ignition back on, the music starts up were you left off on the CD (as expected). However, if you look at your flash drive, it is being accessed. If you then switch to the USB drive, you will discover that it has also been playing reading / playing music there at the same time that the CD was selected and playing. Of course the USB drive started again from the first file on the disk.

If there is some way to get it to pick up where it left off, I'd love to hear.

There are many other strange things about it. First time you hit esc on the HID, and select folders, you get files instead. Every time after that if you select folders, you get folders.

Originally Posted by felau

Hmm...what kind of drive do you use? Is that a USB key or an HDD, because now I make my HDD work perfectly and I found a way to make it work everytime i start my car, tell me more about your actual problem

Originally Posted by wireless2455

Interestingly, if you switch to the CD (with an MP3 CD in it), turn the car off, then turn the ignition back on, the music starts up were you left off on the CD (as expected). However, if you look at your flash drive, it is being accessed. If you then switch to the USB drive, you will discover that it has also been playing reading / playing music there at the same time that the CD was selected and playing. Of course the USB drive started again from the first file on the disk.

This is one of the many things I have found (as mentioned earlier in this thread). It is just bad S/W I hope, but H/W might have issues as well (for example, no non-volatile memory to store this information and no ability to write a "save" file to disk would be a big problem!).