So, last night, in an attempt to lessen the quantity of “broken” I set about to disassemble a large-ish portion of my car interior in order to replace the failed iPod hookup.

First I removed the “downtubes” (plasticy pieces that cover the middle upright supports for the dash)  — far more complicated than it sounds *and* required use of “force it”! —  then removed the head unit.  Plugged in the wiring harness and tested it and …

no love.

Removed the fuse for the radio (in the process dropping the fuse into a deep dark hole… thank heavens for spares) in order to reset radio so it could “find” iPod…

still no love.

Called Tom at EAS (nice, nice guy — thoroughly recommend ordering from them!) and he had me take some pics of the back of the unit so he could check wiring.

He called me back just now — turns out that the cradle connector had changed (same number of pins, but different config) and that’s why the replacement module was working.  I had even suspected I didn’t have the same model as everyone else, as I’d ordered my original iPod hookup *right* after they started making them (again, with the woes of the Early Adopter) — yah me!

New cradle on way.  Head unit temporarily stuffed back into hole in dash.  Report to follow.