Quote Originally Posted by VAG-Abound View Post
Somewhat belated, but to avoid creating a new thread...

I found myself in the same situation. Like others I discovered the VW original USB + music / recovery leads appear to be unavailable, and there doesn't seem to be a guide to making your own - until now .

I used a multimeter on the powered down TPK unit to find pairs of pins with similar resistance to a USB connector on a switched off laptop, and also where the 0V and 5V were. I then snipped the plug end from a USB A extension lead to leave just the socket end, and soldered some pin receptacles from a defunct ECU connector to the four wires in it.

Attachment 39143

The tpk_music_recovery.zip file came from Index of /Updates/VW/VW Touch Phone Kit Music. I used a vintage 2GB USB pendrive formatted FAT32, and no need to remove current files. For the recovery files I tried...
  • Unzipping to tpk_music_recovery, which didn't work
  • Then at the same time, one of which got things working:
    • Copying zip file to root of drive
    • Copying unzipped files to root of drive


The lead was plugged in like this, colours matching standard USB wiring.
Attachment 39139

In case the picture ever gets lost: With the power Molex to the left and audio jacks to the right, then numbering the media connector pins top-left as 1, bottom-left as 2, etc:

  • Pin 5: Red / VBUS / +5V
  • Pin 6: Black / Ground / 0V
  • Pin 7: Green / Data+
  • Pin 8: White / Data-


And it all started to work once power was cycled on the TPK unit:
Attachment 39140Attachment 39141Attachment 39142

Hope that helps someone.
Thank your very much!