Hack the EPROM inside the COMAND unit

[Gatecrash]

Anyone of you try to do this?

 

[sym]

No . . . but why ?

 

[Paul Grainger]

Actually - it would be nice to have the 'opening screen' personalised. I believe that it can be done (I understand that Comands supplied by Steve Krabbenberg have 'MBenzNL' as a start-up logo instead of the MB star).

I would be interested if it could be done by a firmware upgrade (ie without tearing the comand into little bits)

Paul G

 

[Gatecrash]

Sym:
You don't like to personalise software?
Just imagine when you turn on your comand you see yours favorite picture... or something like this

 

[sym]

Ah - the startup screen . . . well yeah, as Paul says above, my COMAND is already personalised by Steve K. , which he does using StarDiagnose, I think, . . and it currently says 'MBenzNL', with the star logo, on startup.

I'm sure that if somebody was clever enough, they could build a relatively simple interface to do such a thing - but its beyond my electronics expertise I'm afraid !

S.

 

[IanT]

I expect the interface would be easy to make, but the PC application to talk to the car / COMAND down it would be a proper challenge!

Is there a way of updating the firmware by using special CDs at boot-up time?

If not, I expect that speaking very nicely to Steve is your best bet.

Ian.

 

[mapleleaf]

I spoke at length with Megacomm in germany last year about this and they stated that whilst the words Mercedes can be replaced with MBenzNl or other text its impossible for anyone other than the manufacturer to alter the actual graphics content of the comand startup screen. so... on the basis that MB tell us it's not possible to retrofit comand , I am sure someone somewhere can crack this one,

 

[VBD]

Speak to Audiocomp they can do this for you but it can only be a greyscale image of a cetain number of pixels(no colour images, I am afraid). It is done via a CD update (MY01 upgrade as this is what contains the MB Star) rather than via STAR.

 

[SilverSaloon]

Speak to Audiocomp they can do this for you but it can only be a greyscale image of a cetain number of pixels(no colour images, I am afraid). It is done via a CD update (MY01 upgrade as this is what contains the MB Star) rather than via STAR.

maybe just a case of finding where the graphic is on the MY01 update cd and then replacing this with your own image. Also searching for the "Mercedes Benz" part in text, you could probably replace but as i very much doubt its in a standard format, you would probably have to write a converter yourself or maybe use a hex-editor program

personally, i prefer the OEM look, but thats just me

 

[miro]

maybe just a case of finding where the graphic is on the MY01 update cd and then replacing this with your own image. Also searching for the "Mercedes Benz" part in text, you could probably replace but as i very much doubt its in a standard format, you would probably have to write a converter yourself or maybe use a hex-editor program

personally, i prefer the OEM look, but thats just me

That is correct. It is a boot loading graphic that masks the startup strings. All you need is to locate the chip inside the comand that holds the bootloader and then hunt down the graphic system file that loads into those sectors. It is all in Hex however.

There is a group of tech-heads in LA working on the AMG logo for this purpose. It is most certainly a hacked MY01 that steve uses.

The instructions on how to reload MY01 (more than once) are already on this site.