Hi,

for my 1996 with CR210 Radio I bought Becker-to-Sony-Unilink cable and a latest Sony Unilink CD changer (CDX-757MX with MP3 play etc). Sony is powered up and recognized by CR210 ok (after it's configured for 10 CD changer), but CD changing does not work.

Further investigation revealed that CR210 is supposed to directly (no EPROM etc changes) work only with "older" Sony, as Sony apparently changed Unilink protocol some time ago :-(

Since I'm already on this quest - does anyone know which Sony CD changers can be controlled by CR210? Or is there a simple hack to make the new ones work?

thanks

George

 

George
Before moving to Alpine MP3 head unit & changer, my '96 993 had the CR210 & Sony 10CD changer as delivered new. As I recall, the CR210 required an EPROM swap to properly run the Sony 10CD changer. Try a call to Becker (888) 423-3537. Very helpful staff.

Becker of N.A.

 

Dan,

Becker replied: "why would we want you to use Sony changer if you can buy CDC-3 from Becker?".
(From my perspective: because Sony has more features like MP3, not to mention it's also at least 3 times cheaper :-). But from Becker's perspective it's fair enough - it's not to their advantage to let people use other brands.
BTW: Sony's response - go and buy Sony head unit for Sony CD changer, we don't know anything about Becker (also fair). Response from the company which made the Becker-to-Sony cable: It used to work, but the guy who was dealing with it before left and did not leave any notes, so I can't help.

Oh well, it may be time for a complete stereo upgrade.... (but I do like the looks of CR210 in the dash and I also know that solutions like this can work - like after-market CD changer in my wife's Mercedes which was a plug-n-play 10 minutes installation a few years ago using the original head unit)

thanks

George

 

George,

I have a 6 disc Sony changer/cr210 combo in my car from the previous owner. I'm trying to locate the paperwork that came w/ the car to give you the name of the shop that did the work, but so far no luck.

They do work together quite well, but have no idea what was needed to be done to get it to work.. I'll keep looking.

 

i am curious: why would you go the route of a cd changer rather than pursue an ipod solution?

 

mborkow, I looked at ipod type of players, but apparently cr210 does not have an aux input/control capabilities for such and I want to use the cr210 buttons to control the music selection etc (unless there are tricks to make cr210 do it which I could not find(?)). A new Sony changer with MP3 playback and ready made connection cable looked so much simpler...

Kelly - could you check the CD chnager number you have? Considering that Becker changed in 1997 to disable direct Sony control I'm guessing cr210 should work with Sonys in production around 1996, which means CDX 45, 51, 65, 71 and 91. Kind of old players, but that's the only guess which comes to mind... I hope there are some newer ones which would work too...

George

 

George,

Just checked the player model... CDX-T65

Sorry, still looking for the shop receipt... sigh.