For those of you with the Navi unit, and have considered spending $320 on the Honda iPod adapter, save your money. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod, but Honda's connectivity for it leaves a lot to be desired. The built-in mysterious PC Card interface is actually better. Just tested a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB compact flash card with a SanDisk Ultra PC Card Adapter and I'm happy to report that it works perfectly.

I loaded the card up to the max with 8GB of MP3s, stuck it in the Navi unit and it started up in about 5 seconds. The ultimate limitation is the 999 song limit. It reads the first 999 tracks it finds, indexing through the folders alphabetically. I had 1440 tracks on the card, but only the first 999 were recognized by the unit.

I tried this previously with two different 2GB SD cards. It behaved very poorly. The Navi unit would skip over about half of the MP3s. At first I thought that the MP3 encoding for some of my tracks were not compatible. I later found that those same songs played fine if I reduced the number of tracks stored in the 2GB card to only 1GB. This is way I switched to compact flash.

Here's some pics for those of you with Navi systems that haven't seen the PC Card interface. There's a lot "under the hood" of this little known feature.

SanDisk Extreme III 8GB compact flash card with a SanDisk Ultra PC Card Adapter


Slide it into the PC Card slot in the Navi unit


Play...


Recognizes on the first 999 tracks


Search by Keyword, Artist, or Album


Search by Keyword...


Search results (notice number of hits in the top right corner, nice touch).


Set random play mode by Folder, Artist, or Album


Random by artist

 

Can you let us know where you purchased the adapter? Is this something you can find at most electronics stores (ie best buy, circuit city, etc)? Obtaining the CF card is easy enough. It also seems as though it doesn't matter on the size of the card, just the number of songs on the card as the unit only recognizes the first 999 it finds. Not that this is an issue, because I don't know that I've even got that many songs on my iPod at this point. I've always just used the 3.5mm stereo cable to plug into the AUX port using my iPod.

 

Both are available on Amazon, but you could probably get it cheaper if you check eBay. Not bad for under $100 compared to an 8GB iPod for $200.

Sandisk PC Card Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-SDDR-6...qid=1217854614


Sandisk 8GB Extreme III Compact Flash
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extrem...qid=1217854776

Note: There are cheaper 8GB compact flash cards out there. I recommend going with the more expensive Sandisk Extreme III for two reasons. One, stick with the Sandisk brand, because there have been reports of problems in the Navi unit with other brands. Two, go with the Extreme III for speed. It will be faster copying songs onto the card (8GB in 15mins, compared to over an hour with a slower card), and the startup time for the Navi to read the card (5 secs vs. 30 secs).

 

I've always been interested in this option. This may have been asked before, but how does one get iTunes format tracks to MP3 format to load onto the PC Card?

 

Select the tracks you want to convert then go to the Advanced menu and select Convert Selection to MP3.

 

thanks nsxrox, does this convert the track permanently to MP3 or do I retain the original iTunes AAC format as well? I would hope that both formats would remain.

 

why dont u just get a 2 gb or 4 gb cf card? I spent maybe 20 bucks total for both the adapter and a 2 gb cf. Works flawlessly.

 

The conversion is not destructive. You will have 2 of the same title but with different formats.

Edit - Of course, you should test the conversion first. For example, if you have a CD of music that can be easily added again, try converting one of those songs.

 

Also Under Nav Hacks There Is A Way To Data Log To The Card Also.
Keep On Playing With It.

 

I also got the adapter and (2) 2GB cards from amazon. Works perfect. Don't think I will ever need more than a 1000 songs. The other card is for the digital camera. Had to also get a 12-1 card reader for the laptop. I checked walmart for a 2 GB card, it was around $50, I paid about $20 including shipping. This is my first plunge into the world of MP3s. No more buying CD's.