A word of caution....

[rhodesman]

Last night I bricked my CIC.

I was doing something so simple as replacing the splash screen, really no bid deal. Well I guess editing the /etc folder on a running OS is not how QNX/BMW like to roll because this AM I had lost ALL navigation (was grayed out in the menu) and then when I got home from dropping off the kids at camp, the cic went black and never returned! Somehow whatever edits I made to the /etc folder, which included chmoding the folder to 777 and changing the splash.png symlink to point to my new splash image, caused some sort of chain reaction in the cic that upon a hard boot (I pulled the battery in hopes of resetting the CIC like I did before) it never came back up!

Thankfully INPA showed it in bootloader mode and ISTA-D & P showed it as waiting for programming so it was just a simple matter of reflashing the ZB-number to it via WinKFP. Unfortunately though, the CIC is only accessible via the OBD as there is no software on it to receive via MOST, thus a twelve pack of beer and borrowing my wife's ML to act as a backup generator it is then. Good thing I have a whole slew of movies to watch on netflix.

 

[Deadknight]

Sorry to hear that, it is possible that symlinking might have gone wrong. Also chmod'ing entire folder might be a bad idea.

I found good articles about structure of cic.

A guy made a boot script that changes non persistant data (like other splash.png's) on this site. You may override the splashes that changed after boot maybe.
He says some stuff is dangerous though so be careful.
"If the command is executed and no errors are issued, then everything is OK, the startl6sss.sh script can be edited. BUT! Before editing anything, make sure that your text editor supports translations of strings of type LF (about line breaks ). Do not try to edit shell scripts (* .sh) using Windows Notepad (it does not know how to use LF), take a normal editor, for example, the AkelPad or EditPlus editor built into the TotalCommander assembly. In Mac OS X, I used TextMate. Otherwise, serious problems can arise, up to the inoperability of the CIC."

Other links to check out for some more info on structure of cic.
http://mhhauto.com/Thread-BMW-CIC-FTP-How-to
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=841458

 

[doublespaces]

Glad to hear you are able to get it back, so is there a proper method for changing the splash image? dimensional requirements?

 

[rhodesman]

@Deadknight thanks for that link! I didn't even consider the whole LF support issue. My code editor (Atom) may not come with LF enabled or supported (I'll have to check). There's probably a plugin for it I can install, but it's not something I would have normally installed because I usually only deal with frontend code and if I'm making server config edits I typically use vi or nano in terminal.

Lessons to be learned, as a wise man once said "those who follow only need to move forward, but those who lead build strength as they forge a path".

 

[rhodesman]

Glad to hear you are able to get it back, so is there a proper method for changing the splash image? dimensional requirements?

the dimensions were right, I think the issue came down to me deleting the sym-link and creating a new one that probably sent the system into a panic. I'm not sure, but thank god I have a backup!

 

[doublespaces]

I wonder how many of these features like updating the splash logo could be written into an android app? I have a lot of information to go over, but the thought occurred.

 

[rhodesman]

Well guys, here's an update: it looks like I'll be a guinea-pig for what NOT to do! I'll work on writing up a document for how to recover a CIC but first I need to RECOVER my CIC! As of now, I have tried to flash the CIC via winkfp comfort & manual setting selections via expert mode, I also even tried to use ISTA/P to no avail! I know what the problem is now but I don't know how to fix it:

Problem is that when the CIC first stopped working I tried to update it via winKFP but did it the wrong order order!!! It should be 63 -> 62 -> A0.

63 = MASK/CIC
62 = MOSTGW
A0 = CIC

I coded it 62 -> 63 and now 63 cannot communicate with anything. I'm going to try and pull the HDD and swap it out with the OEM I have backed up for just this occasion but I am 99% sure the problem is due to the CIC not able to communicate via MOST which is not allowing it to talk to any of the other devices on that network. I think I might have to pull the head unit and program it via a Serial RS232 connection unless someone else has any other idea's. Thankfully, I have that nice repo of CIC design spec PDFs I collected so that's helping me find ways to troubleshoot and avenues to fix the problem.

 

[rhodesman]

Well the good news is that I have recovered my iDrive/CIC system from failure! The bad news however, it looks like ISTA/P has killed the SSD drive that was in my CIC! ISTA/P failed the CIC update/recover and spit back a half dozen errors when I had the SSD in the CIC. I swapped in the OEM HDD and redid the ISTA/P update for CIC and sure enough, the CIC booted up just fine. I then plugged the SSD into my QNX VM to redo the disk image copy from the HDD and my computer wouldn't recognize it!!! The drive doesn't even show up as unmounted media, it's dead-dead.

So word of caution: IF YOU UPDATED your CIC HDD to something else, pull it out, put the OEM back in then do a CIC update!! Apparently, the CIC software update from ISTA/P will push a firmware update the HDD, and well, the SSD didn't really like that.

 

[toxx]

There is a CIC hdd image over torrents from cartechnology forum, if you still need it i can send you the link. You just write the image to a CIC hdd and it's like default hard drive.

Maybe the FW update also writes something to HDD firmware itself, as the unit goes as a combo. Like you update the FW on any desktop HDD with vendor's update, maybe this BMW update tried to also update the HDD and the SSD was not compatible.

As a word of wisdom from a 15 year experienced IT guy: don't EVER chmod a full system directory !

 

[Boorda]

There is a CIC hdd image over torrents from cartechnology forum, if you still need it i can send you the link.

I'd be interested in that link please!

 

[rhodesman]

There is a CIC hdd image over torrents from cartechnology forum, if you still need it i can send you the link. You just write the image to a CIC hdd and it's like default hard drive.

Yes, please post it here, or if need be, maybe we can post it in the private tech channel if there is an issue of posting torrents and other possibly copy written materials.

Maybe the FW update also writes something to HDD firmware itself, as the unit goes as a combo. Like you update the FW on any desktop HDD with vendor's update, maybe this BMW update tried to also update the HDD and the SSD was not compatible.

I'm 99% positive this is what happened. The SSD isn't recognized on any system, not even in the BIOS as a connected device.

As a word of wisdom from a 15 year experienced IT guy: don't EVER chmod a full system directory !

LOLLOLOLOL!!! Noted, I can't say I have ever chmod a full system directory but I did try to delete a "pervious system" directory only to find out (for some odd reason) the active system memory controller was in that directory. It was like watching a snake eat it's own tail...

 

[Rob09msport]

Not seeing anything in bios sounds like hardware failure cause even borked firmware should still show up on an ide bus in pio mode it just won't do Jack and will prob lock up.

 

[e90reborn]

Somehow whatever edits I made to the /etc folder, which included chmoding the folder to 777

that's really not a good idea because /etc might contain script files that are not supposed to run but are triggered when you give them the execute bit mode. never take the lazy path when playing with Unix

my car is currently out for detailing and when it's back I'll mess with the splash symlink and tell you how it went.

 

[e90reborn]

There is a CIC hdd image over torrents from cartechnology forum

I believe you are referring to this one: https://cartechnology.co.uk/showthread.php?tid=14366

 

[VARO]

Hey guys! I know, the thread is probably dead...
But still: Anyone managed to change the splash screen? Like just replacing the old .png with a custom one in the same directory, same file name?

Thank!

 

[rhodesman]

@VARO Not successfully, no. I basically bricked my CIC and ended up having to do a factory "upgrade" which made me loose my BMW Apps hack because now it requires a FIC number to unlock. So basically after all we did, the basic rule of thumb is, don't mess with it. It's crazy doing something simple like swapping a PNG with the same name would cause an issue, but the CIC system is specifically built for just doing what it does.

It's not a regular computer as in the CPU speed and memory allocations are built to exactly work with the software written exactly for it. Making changes just seems to break things. Without the actual source code, I feel like it's not possible to make changes. Sorry :/

 

[Rob09msport]

Probably has be exact same file size and def same color depth and resolution.

 

[VARO]

@rhodesman Yep thats really crazy, that the whole system is bricked just by replacing the PNG, never thougt this may happen, so I was pretty much shocked when i read this thread..

@Rob09msport thats what I thought, when everything is just the same, only that its another picture inside, how the hell can the cic even notice this?? Bus as rhodesman told, it just bricks the cic, I'm not so much in the mood of trying anything...

You can run Doom and other games on in but replacing a simple png file with same name, resolution, ... just kills the whole system. Just doesnt male any sense to me (Of course I believe what rhodesman wrote!)

 

[aus335iguy]

Does anyone remember when a wall paper image of a certain colour depth bricked android devices ... could just be the image used wasn’t compatible and caused the issue... the only way to know for sure is to try again with a different image

 

[bosolanu]

Hi guys, this might be offtopic but I didn't know where to post without a new thread.

Is there any tool that I could use to flash CIC and Combox via MOST apart from ICOM? I mean I'd really like one but it's pretty expensive and I've made do with K-DCAN cable for everything programming or diag apart from these 2, so I wouldn't want to spend ~400E on it.

Thanks

Edit: Maybe via direct ethernet to CIC? Although I've only got 150kbps when using FTP