You shouldn't have to supply additional power to the DICE unit.
So, if you have VIDA running and plug one end of DICE into the laptop and the other into the car - what happens??
My concern at the moment being you've tried a firmware update and you say nothing happened. Is this because there was no lights/power to the dice unit or did it go through the motions but just didn't update or did it throw up an error and fail??
Basically my thoughts are with the fact it sounds like there is a problem with your actual DICE unit. The only other thing to try would be load VIDA onto some other machine and retry your DICE unit on that.
