gbmarc

Three years ago I purchased a 2007 A8. To my pleasant surprise it had Sirius subscribed which has continued every year without me doing anything.
A couple of months ago my MMI went black which turned out to be a bad Sirius receiver. I purchased a used one and swapped the bad one out but now I no longer had Sirius because the receiver ID had changed.
When I contacted Sirius they could see that the old receiver had a lifelong account but they couldn't switch anything over because I, of course, had no idea what the account credentials were.
Trying to go back and contact the original seller (who was selling it for his deceased mother) would be very difficult.
So . . . . does anyone have a bright idea of how to fix the problem?
I wonder if there's a way I could take the "ID part" of the bad receiver and use it on the new one? I have no idea how these boxes are built though.
Mark

fjord

Open the old receiver and see where the damage is. Then swap parts over when you find out what was wrong. I hope you know how to use a soldering iron .

gbmarc

I'm afraid that unless I see "big black burn mark here" or "big bulging leaking capacitor here" I won't be able to identify any damage.
I guess there is a chance that the optical connection part is self-contained and could be swapped out, because this seems to be the problem. The optical connection is no longer forwarding the signal to the next device on the loop.

fjord

Depending on your circuit analysis knowledge you can figure out which component holds the SiriusID and replace it. This module does not have component protection, I've personally swapped a couple from junk yards and got like a year of free XM with each.