Bricked devices aren’t always so easy to recover from. If they wrote the file to local storage, they could be stuck in a reboot loop, where as soon as the main program starts, it sees the bad file and then immediately crashes, starting the cycle over. Power cycling wouldn’t fix that; you’d need to reset/format the filesystem to recover. Not likely something easily available to an end user.
That seems dumb to me, but I don’t know that it’s actually in the standard. Could just be a bad choice on the part of Madza (or rather their supplier).
It didn’t even occur to me that the thing would have writable storage at all. I mean, sure, it would need to store presets and a few other things, but I would have thought all of those could just be reset. I just assumed it would run off firmware.
I don’t see how the filename could could be a Mazda-only issue, though. What I understood is that the radio station send bad data. Surely that data would have be using some sort of standard so that it would work on other “HD” radios.
I dunno; the file probably comes through as a blob that contains a description, filename, and the binary data itself. Maybe some “intent” as well, like whether it’s a station logo or song cover art. The radio could choose to parse the data to determine the file type, but if you’re a programmer and see that the filename extension is right there, why not save some time and use that?
Some articles seem to be claiming that the station sent bad data, but I don’t know if that’s been established. Yeah, apparently sending the file without an extension was a mistake, but that doesn’t mean it was against the standard. It could just be the way it’s commonly done, and so Madza depended on it even if technically they shouldn’t have.
It seems appropriate to link to an old thread, in which the digital clock/calendar in a Doper’s old Hyundai gets confused about a leap year.
The date changes from FEB 29 to Feb 30, to Feb 31, Feb 32, Feb 33 etc, etc.
Two months later the display shows “FEB 99”.
And then, it gets …interesting. https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-useless-accessory-in-my-car-is-now-even-more-useless
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) that old Santa Fe is long gone. However, my current vehicle - a 2018 Toyota RAV4 which I’ve had about three months now - has it’s own odd audio quirk. It apparently prefers Yes to the Beatles.
I have a USB drive full of music that I play in the car. If I am playing a Beatles album and turn the car off, when I get back in it will finish playing the song it was on then switch to a Yes album.
When it first started happening, it would start playing “Close To The Edge”. After a week or two of this, I decided to delete the “Close To The Edge” album from my USB drive to see what would happen. What happened was, it would start playing “Fragile” instead.
I’m going to delete ALL of my Yes albums from my USB drive and see what happens then.
