The CIC unit..part of the iDrive system is the brains of the system whose trademark folding screen presesnts the data..the screen is just a screen, all the smarts happen in the big box, out of sight, the 'radio' you can see is the top part of the unit, like an iceberg most of it is hidden.
In E89s its the optiion 609A Navigation System Professional.
Inside the box there is an AM/FM tuner, optionally a DAB tuner, various interfaces to the rest of the car, the PDC system and the various audio related pre-amp for either the 676 Hi-FI off board amp or the 677 Top-Fi DSP/amp..both of which are in the boot.
The CIC communicates with the 676 amp via normal analogue wires, the 677 it speaks to it on a fibre optic ring called MOST.
Both versions have MOST o talk to the MULF /ULF /combox and things like an external CD if it had one.
The box with different face plates was fitted to most BMWs between 2008 ish and 2016 ish..
There's a hard drive in there which stores the maps, the Gracenote music database and optionally some music you choose to store on it.
I've written this note as my unit started to die..first of all, very occasionally, it would, after a damp / cold night outside, shut down 5 minutes or so after starting the car, then go into a cycle of rebooting after 5-10 minutes, run for 90 seconds, then shutdown,,,then repeat until after about an hour or so it would just run.
I had various pet theories about it..damp causing issues with fibre optic cables, laterly failing hard disc.
I cloned the hard disc onto a solid state drive and thought I had cured it...sadly a few days ago during my winter upgrade program the system started doing this process of rebooting endlessly..with no constant running..for the few seonds it was running the maps were much faster due to the SSD.
So I looked at options...
A new unit is £3,700..a BMW supplied exchange unit was around £1,800 ish plus a £2k deposit.
I looked at other options.
I decided to get a 2015 20i E89 write off one..plugged it in..good news..AM/FM/DAB/USB support all worked ..bad news no NAV and no sound..
In some ways not surprsing as it came from a 676 optioncar..you could see that in the tone controls as there was no entry for the equaliser.
The unit needs to be coded..BMW charge an extortionate fee..looked at Indys..selected a Polish guy to do it remotely.
For whatever reason, and we spent some time, he couldn't access the unit via ISTA/P..
Compunding this is the ID4 Motion digital cluster which doesn't play well and the Match 10 DSP amp with lots of MOST stuff..heh ho..
So now resigned to send both units off..one to be repaired, the other to be coded to the car.
Romamia or Poland are my options..
Scottish Borders
