Getting the Alpine iPod adaptor to work with the nano

Question

I've had my Nano since September and love it. Had to purchase a new stereo for my car so I had a new Alpine Head Unit and the iPod adaptor installed. The radio works great. The adaptor will not work on my Nano no matter what I do. The error message I get is that my iPod doesn't support the attached accessory.
I've reset my Nano to factory settings twice and I've reset the Head Unit once. That seems to fix everyone else's problem but not mine. Now I'm stuck because I went to the Apple Store and was told my Nano is fine its an Alpine problem, I call Alpine and was told it works just fine with the Nano so it must be a Nano problem. At this point I don't know what to do.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Hi Gary,
Thanks so much for your response. I have the Alpine 9847 with the 420i iPod adaptor.
And I should have mentioned this before I did go back to the store for help. They tried and tried but couldn't get it to work (they reset my iPod several times and reset the head unit as well). They even tried to get my Nano to work on some other units in the store - Kenwoods and Alpines and couldn't get it to work anywhere. They swear to me that they've used this adaptor on other Nano's so they said go to the Apple store your iPod must be defective. The sales guy even brought out his iPod (40G I think - don't know the version) and it worked just fine in my car so of course in their mind an iPod work they've used it for other Nano's so they think the hook-up is OK (and I'm hard pressed to argue).
The man at the Apple Store said that the 420i doesn't work with Nanos or iPod videos because it was designed to work with USB Mass Storage and the Nano and iPod video uses PTP (I have no idea what this means). He said the problem was with Alpine because the adaptor needed a software update. I called the audio store back (and this is a actual audio store not a Best Buy/Circuit City type store) and they said they would look into this.
So I called Alpine and the man told me there is no software update and as far as he knew it worked with Nano and iPod videos even though it wasn't designed to work with them; there was nothing he could do for me so his solution was go buy a new iPod (of course my options are a Nano or an iPod video which brings me full circle to it won't work with the 420i). Plus its new I don't want another iPod I like the one I have!
So Apple says its Alpine's adaptor, and Alpine says its Apple's iPod - I say I just want to listen to my music!
The audio store is still trying to help but they seemed stumped as well. My iPod has had some quirks (took me over an hour to get my computer to recognize it tonight to reload songs, I have to have iTunes open before plugging in the Nano or it jams) but I never thought much about it. Is there such a thing as a tempermental Nano that can't be trained?
Thanks again for your help! (And sorry its so long but I figured the more info the better.)
Jen