flaw

Can someone tell me why a high tech car my 2007 S550 has such archaic trechnology like a PCMCIA card slot? Most PCs and laptops are moving away from this technology. I spent nearly 4 hours on Saturday to track down a PCMCIA card adaptor for SD card media. So I proceed to load about 300 MP3 on the card. Well, it play OK. Again, no Chinese chararcters were display on the COMAND (I already gripe about this on another thread) Anyway, after it play once, I keyed off, come back and the whole COMAND audio segment crashed and froze up, like your computer, except there is no reset button. Basically, I have to turn off the car, wait about 15 mins, retstart and the screen and audio unit works again. But on retstart, it gives an error message that it does not recognize the media format on the SD card in the PCMCIA slot. I took the card out, scan it with Norton antivirus thinking it may be infected but it was clean. Put it in and the whole thing happens again. very frustrated. Could not wait for the iPod adaptor to be available.

Anyone out there try their PCMCIA slot yet??

Any advice??

MB Fanatic

I used the PCMCIA slot a few times and it works pretty damn well.

Gebop

Works fine BUT every now and then must eject card and reinsert for card to be recognized. This happens upon ignition.
Best feature is the number of songs held on a 2 gig card. Unfortunately, this pales in comparison to Ipod.

rgbyhkr

4 hours? Really? This took me 5 seconds to find on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...Fencoding=UTF8

I could order and have it in hand tommorrow if I wanted.

Jeff

flaw

Ah yes 4 hours to find but I got it immediately. Ordering from Amazon for us Canadians mean a two week hold up at the customs. No instant gratification there!! haha!

hcwong

I loaded up a CF card with some MP3 files and inserted it into the reader. Got the same 'format unrecognized' message.

I took the card out and did a clean reformat, loaded it once again with some MP3 files and still got the 'format unrecognized' message. Decided not to bother and stick with my home made MP3 dvds.

Obviously some people out there have had better luck with PCMCIA cards, any tips?

hcwong

As I mentioned in another thread I am playing home made MP3 dvds which hold about 600 MP3 songs on a standard dvd-r with a capacity of 4.7Gb, arranges them nicely in folders within folders and cost pennies for blank media, so you may want to consider going this route as an interim measure till the iPod integration kit ships.

flaw

Ok, here is an update. I got a new SD card and it is working much better with no freeze up. So I think its working much better. One observation. I have a bunch of MP3s Chinese songs and titles in Chinese (yes, I am a Honger) When these songs are loaded on DVDs in the slots, the titles do not show up-either on the Comand screen nor the dash display. But in the PCMCIA slot, the titles show up in the dash display but not the COMAND. What gives???

StephenK

What software are you using for this?

rgbyhkr

Add that to the list of reasons not to move to Canada...

MrMBenz1

I'm having the exact same problem. Brought a PCMCIA card with me when I took delivery yesterday, and not even the dealer could figure out what was going on. I'm wondering if I just don't know how to properly store the files onto the card itself, but overall, I'm just frustrated since the iPod dock is still on back order... Anyone with this problem been able to solve it?

Mrkhan347

srry if i sound dumb but how do you make DVD mp3 cds?

MrMBenz1

Burn the mp3s onto a DVD rather than a CD-R/CD-RW...

Mrkhan347

and the benz will be able to read it? how much songs can it hold on the average

hcwong

I use iTunes running on Macs.

I just create playlist in the normal fashion, click burn, and when prompted to insert blank media I insert a DVD-R disk and burn as usual.

A standard DVD-R has 4.7GB capacity, easily good for well over 500 pop songs. iTunes will arrange them in folders so:

Artistes -> Albums -> Songs

so managing this massive amount of music is a breeze.

hcwong

Effortlessly.

JAdmiral

I burned an amazing amount of MP3 songs on a DVD, and it plays wonderfully-- no flaws, skips, and all the titles displayed clearly. I was excited about having a PCMCIA option, but considering that sn SD card holds 2Gig max, and a DVD holds 4.7gig, it was a no brainer. With about three or four of those discs, I think I can have my entire MP3 collection on board!

Mrkhan347

do i need a DVD-RW? and do you need any specific software to burn it to a dvd r?

JAdmiral

If you know how to burn a CD, then you know how to burn a DVD. The only difference between a DVD-R and DVD-RW is the rewritability feature of an RW. Having said that, with the price drop of the Rs, plus the incompatibility you sometimes encounter with the RWs, I would stick to the DVD-R discs.

If you're looking for good burning software, I recommend NERO, found at www.nero.com, or your local software retailer.

Mrkhan347

thanx for the help bro, and what a beautifull car you have!

amb9800

SD cards are readily available up to 4 GB (and pretty cheap too - <$80):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220146

8GB SD's should be shipping soon (along with 16 GB CF).

JAdmiral

4GB cards ARE readily available, but when you compare the cost of one 4GB card (<$80) to one 4.7GB DVD+R (<$0.60), and the fact that I could care less if I should lose a DVD+R, or loan it out, for me it's pretty simple. And I hear that many PCMCIA cards have problems reading 2+GB cards.

Now, onto a REAL important question: Can the M-B read a double-sided DVD? Can you imagine over NINE MEGS of music on one disc?

Shai88

Hey Flaw,

I just got my new S W221, and I have the same problem as you, I see may replies on this thread, but no realy explenation or soloution.

Can you tell me if you found already a soloution???

Thanks
Shai

vraa

Shai, your best bet is just using the DVDR's.
If they can really read dual layer DVDR's, then you're looking at (get ready for some math)

9000 mb on a dual layer dvdr
5mb per song (assuming 128kbps which is average, and five minutes per song).
1800 songs.
That's 1800 minutes worth of music on a single disc.
That's 30 hours worth of music on a single disc. By comparison, that's about 2 iPod Mini's.

All for a couple of cents, versus almost a hundred bucks to go the PCMCIA route. :o

Shai88

Hi Vraa,

Thanks for your reply, I know this option, and I also got my mew 80GB ipod, wich I will connect soon, I ordered tha ipod interface and should receive is soon.
But I still looking for an answer to this, there must be a reason why the PCMCIA card is freezing the full system if you dont take it out before you switch of the car. This system should be working if it is in every car. My car is also brand new 2007, so that means normaly that bugs like that should be repaired in that time.

Anyway thanks and I would apriciate if someone got an answer or solution for this.

Shai