JMAGOLAN

A rare but frustrating problem for members of this forum ( as witnessed by the few posts on this topic), has been the situation where the radio station data does not update, but freezes on a certain song/artist on a given station. This is NOT the situation seen when the broadcaster is having difficulty with their data broadcast, which can be checked by seeing if the station data updates correctly in a fellow car.
In summary, the problem is as follows:
The radio station data (song/artist/station info) does not update on the instrument cluster display nor on the Main scren of the PCM, but continues to display fragments of the data (station frequency, part of the song title, part of the artist's name, etc.). Pressing the INFO button on the PCM and highlighting the Radio Data option brings up the correct data on this PCM screen, but does not update the central display in the cluster. This screen updates as it should.
The problem first appeared on my 2006 C4S Cab last December. A fellow Rennlister in my area was having the same problem with a different station (i.e my problem station updated on his car, and his problem station updated correctly on mine). I decided to wait till the car was due for the 20K mile oil change in May before taking it to the dealer. It reappeared after a five month hiatus, yesterday. The fixes for each of these occurances (for me) are as follows:
1) Prior to taking the car to the dealer in May, I did the Navigation update that came out in April. This included a software update to the PCM, which resolved the issue the first time.
2) When the problem reappeared yesterday, I removed the 10 amp fuse for the PCM and left it out over night. After replacing it this morning, the problem is again resolved (essentially a "reboot" of the PCM).

I hope this helps any other listers who may have this problem, and saves them a hopefully unneccesssary trip to the dealer.

Jerry

Edgy01

Thanks for the clarification on this. Once again, immature software is the culprit. Dealers should be made are of this. When I used to operate a software-intensive system we as operators had the opportunity to submit either a Program Incident Report (PIR) or a Software Desgin Request (SDR) to report an error or to suggest an improvement. One would think that Porsche, like anyone else, would solicit this information from their best troubleshooters,--the owners. But I'm not aware of their interest in this. Corrections are probably only made when THEY discover enough issues.

JMAGOLAN

I plan to call the dealer's service department tomorrow with the above information. Hopefully, they will pass the information on to Porsche and can avoid pulling someone's PCM to replace under warranty.

Jerry

GSIRM3

Jerry,

Thanks for the update. I am the fellow Rennlister in Raleigh that you referred to in your post. If you recall, Leith tried the new PCM software on my car, but my car already had the latest version, so it would not load. I did however get the new Nav DVD, but my problem with the radio data persisted. About two months after the attempt to update the PCM software, my radio started operating correctly, with no action taken by me. The problem came back a couple months later, but then corrected itself again in about two days.

Thanks for the tip on fixing the problem. If the problem comes back on my car, I will try the fix.

Gerald