I guess like cellphones, it needs to be properly synced. After a while, it becomes out of sync with the headunit, and throws errors. Thats the only thing I can think of.

 

Okay so i've had my 9857 for about a month and a half now and just today my ipod connected starts f'n up. on the deck it just says "searching" and it'll do that forever, on the ipod it'll switch between the regular ipod menu and the "ok to disconnect" screen, it'll just keep switching back and forth. i'm going to try and reset the ipod with the menu, select buttons method and i'll let ya know.

 

It worked, aww yeeaaaaaaaaahhh

 

Hmm I have yet to experience any of these problems with my 9857 and 3g ipod photo (20gb).

 

Wow, I haven't been here in a while.

Just wanted to let you folks out there know that I think I figured it out (for my situation, at least). It seems, as I suspected, hard drive based Ipods just aren't up to the task. Ok, just mine. I guess the 9857 interface is extremely...intolerant....of errors in I/O. And since my 4th gen has been beaten to death, performance has degraded slightly enough to affect the 9857. In fact, my 4th gen acts a bit weird now even when not hooked up to the deck. It didn't do that before.

Flash based Ipods work perfectly. Guess all those moving parts in HD based players just spell disaster.

Cheers,
Grant