I know there are many threads on this already, but I thought I would share my results with the group.

What Didn't Work:

I purchased this adapter off of Amazon, but I had no luck with it:


I tried it with this card:


But no joy. I also tried it with a 2 GB card that I had lying around, but it didn't work either.

I tried it with nothing but a single MP3 in the root folder, but every time I got an unrecognized format error.

Some of the reviews on Amazon indicated success, so I think the adapter may just be defective. (I tested it on a Windows 8 laptop and although the card was recognized, I couldn't read from it, either. It could be Windows 8 or the card.) I've contacted the seller and they're replacing it for me. I'll post an update when I receive the new one.

What Worked:

As an alternative, I purchased this adapter and 32 GB compact flash card:



I put my music on it and it works BEAUTIFULLY! I haven't filled up the card, yet, but I have ~10 GB on it.

I've noticed the more folders and files I add, the longer it takes to start playing when I start the car as it catalogs the music. Originally, I had about 10 mp3's in the root folder, and it started almost instantaneously. Now, with about 10 GB on it, it takes about 30 seconds to start playing. The compact flash card is 133x but Amazon has 400x for the same price. I'm not sure if this would speed it up or not, since I don't know where the bottleneck is.

AND it resumes playing where it left off. Amazingly, I moved the stuff around on the card, including moving the song that was currently playing when I removed the card into another folder, and when I put it back in, COMAND found the song and resumed where it had left off!

The only drawback I have found is that some of my music is long DJ sets from EDC, etc., and the fast forward and reverse are quite slow. Basically, it's not practical to fast forward, say, 30 minutes into a 2 hour set.

Anyway, hope this helps someone!

 

Only downside being you have to have a PCMCIA slot or a CF slot on your computer, correct?

 

token, how do you navigate and how is it displayed on the screen, could you post a picture?


if only certain pcmcia adaptors work... I wonder is any USB adaptors work could come to life.... and if you could get that to happen what would be the max size of stick it could take

 

I use something like this (not the exact same, but similar):

 

It looks like a directory tree, with folders listed followed by the individual songs. You can move into a folder by clicking on it, or back up by selecting ".." just like in Windows Explorer, for example.

Interestingly, the card reader seems to be considered a sort of "disk 7," as it's listed in the same list as the 6 DVD's in the changer.

I'll take some pics later tonight.

Hmm, that's a good idea! I bet you could find one that worked. I'm guessing the limitation wouldn't be on the size of the disk, per se, but on the folder and song limitations as described in the manual.

 

Awesome! You just fixed so many people's problem. 👏👏👏 Ordering mine now.

 

Here are some quick photos.

The system starts up playing the first song if the card was just inserted, or continuing the last song that was playing when you shut down the car.

If you click the dial, the directory tree is shown. I'm in the House subdirectory of the root.



I used the dial to move down to Markus Schulz.



Then clicked on it to see his albums in the subdirectory.



Now I've moved into Do You Dream to see the song list. The reason it says each number twice is because COMAND is numbering them, but my song titles already had numbers. I'll try removing the numbers from the filenames later so that it formats nicely, but I'm not sure how to maintain sort order then. You can see the whole path on the top.



And I've scrolled down to song #10.



I've clicked on song #10, and it's now playing. The little tick marks under the song represent each song in the folder. You can see the little yellow marker is on the 10th tick. You can click the knob left and right to move to the next song or previous, and you can hold it left or right to reverse or fast forward (painfully slow!) through a song.



The MP3 menu lets you change the sort order, and I haven't played with the Tracks A-Z or Folder menus, yet. But the Changer menu lets you chose whether you're playing DVD's or the memory card. This is what I meant before about it looking like disk #7.



And it also shows up on the instrument cluster, and you can control it via the steering wheel.



Note that if you have an MP3 DVD, the navigation through the DVD is exactly the same. (If only the iPod integration were as seamless as this! )

I hope this helps!

 

Glad to hear that! Apart from the fact that it takes a little while to start up, it really is a nice integration.

 

CF is always a safe choice but it is really odd that the part that was advertised for MBs did not work. There are many SD HC card adapters that work too. I've been using a Sandisk PCMCIA adapter for SD HC cards and it works well. Unfortunately there is a Sandisk product that looks very much the same but only accepts SD cards (max 2 GB). You were quite unlucky.

 

Congratz to you,to have found a solution for your system to this frustrating issue;

I am still sceptical and will wait until more members have tried this and hopefully confirm it actually works !

For me no PCMCIA (neither original M-B nor clone pcmcia-solution) with any size and type of SD-card has ever worked properly..

 

The seller of the Tera card has another one for me in the mail. I'll post updates when I get it and see if it works. Hopefully it was just a faulty card. I'm just glad to know that I don't have issues with the COMAND unit itself!

 

Properly or not at all?

I've tried everything I have at home, Sandisk CD and Sandisk 6-in-1 and some very old non-branded CF PCMCIA adapters and all have been fine (within the file/folder number restrictions, file formats etc.). Welcome to visit my place for testing.

 

thanks token, great post.



indeed if only the ipod had been done properly. by default the car always starts up with no navigation possible and no track info display. you have to toggle speedo display to get to ipod navigation and track info display. I guess if you have a load of random stuff, then its like playing the radio but with your choice of song and better quality.




I've posted more about this on the ipod thread




is the limit no matter what you get to work 32 gig via pcmcia?
the format can only be mp3?
but you can take quality up to mp3 320 kb?

 

Not properly ..it works sometimes with several songs or at times it works for an hour or so, then Comand gets stuck.
Only turning off the W221 S500(2006),getting out and locking car will reset Comand.

Thanks for the offer Diesel Benz but I am in Amsterdam (NL) on the other side of the big pond ..

 

Perhaps you have mentioned this before, I tend to remember something like this from the past. Sounds to me like a hardware issue, like a poor connector within Comand. Might not make sense trying to fix it.

 

Can you see if it will load videos?

 

A 2007 W221, no. We can all see it by reading the manual where supported file formats are mentioned.

 

I have same one.......only with a 4GB card. Will look into getting a 32.....Thanks