Help: Alpine KCA-420i IPOD interface

[tomk]

I'm trying to get the standard IPOD dock to work with the KCA-420i. It sees the IPOD but I get no audio. I believe that the pins for audio do not match up. Does anyone have the pinouts for the cable with the KCA-420i?

Thanks

[TheBum]

The audio is not connected to the passthrough connector on the dock. I think that some adventurous soles have hacked their docks, essentially running extra wires for the audio connections. The pinout is available at http://pinouts.ru/data/ipod_pinout.shtml.

[tomk]

Thanks. I'm actually looking for the pinouts on the cable that comes with the KCA-420i, IPOD side, so that I can match them up going into the dock. I'm thinking that it may be easier to modify the cable than the dock.

[TheBum]

Originally posted by tomk
Thanks. I'm actually looking for the pinouts on the cable that comes with the KCA-420i, IPOD side, so that I can match them up going into the dock. I'm thinking that it may be easier to modify the cable than the dock.

The link I provided is for the pinout you want. The cable connector necessarily has the same pinout as the pass-through connector on the dock and the dock connector on the iPod.

[Uncle Rico]

tomk, just wondering if you figured out a way to make this work? I tried the same thing a few months ago with no success. I was using a 30g Photo and a Photo Dock with an Alpine CDA-9855 head unit. Mine was showing the same behavior, the text and controls ported to the head unit, but no audio. After disassembling the dock, I realized that the audio pins in the connector for the iPod to not port to the dock connector where the KCA-420i would plug in, they divert to the line out jack. I figured there are probably two ways around this:

A) solder wires from the iPod connector to the dock connector port for the audio pins so that audio would pass from the iPod to both the dock connector port AND the line out jack. The problem I had there is that my soldering skills are not quite up to the task of working with something so small.

B) Cut open the wire to the dock connector end of the cable from the KCA-420i and isolate the audio signal wires. Seperate those wires out and solder a 3.5mm jack on the end, so effectively the cable coming from the KCA-420i would have both a dock connector and a 3.5mm jack and plug both into the dock (dock connector for text + controls and 3.5mm for audio signal). Again, this is byond my level of soldering skills with the wires being so tiny. Also, the only practical way I could figure to isolate those audio wires from the rest is to hack up the actual dock connector and trace those wires to the correct pins, rendering your cable useless and forcing you into buying a new KCA-420i. The wires inside did not seem logically colored as to suggest which ones were meant for audio.

One other way you might be able to do this is to open up the KCA-420i box and find a place on the circuit board corresponding to audio in and make a wire going directly from the board to a 3.5mm jack for the line out on the dock. I visually inspected the circuit board, but nothing jumped out at me and I didn't want to risk ruining the box.

Now I've upgraded to a 60g Video and a 5 gen dock. For sh-ts and giggles I connected the 420i cable to the 5 gen dock. With this setup, the iPod does not even turn on, nor does it display text so apparently nothing is passing through.

I have tried looking for third party docks that don't have a line out jack (assuming that all pins would be a straight pass-through to the dock connector) but never found any like this. I have found a few third party docks with dock connector + line out, but my inquiries to the manufacturer about whether the dock will pass audio to the dock con port have gone unanswered.

If you've found a way to make this work, I'd be glad to hear what you did, or possibly even willing to pay you to modify a dock for me. If you haven't done anything but are planning on attempting this and there is anything I can offer to help, let me know because I really want to see this work.