I had a perfectly fine 21st century Kenwood radio/CD player in the van.

I rewired the van to take advantage of its "more advanced" features,
such as using its "external amp switch" to power up a subwoofer amp when
the head is powered up.

I enjoyed perfectly adequate sound for many, many years.

Anyhoo, I pulled the head last year prior to removing the dash, and when
I re-installed the head, it didn't boot up. I took it to two local car
stereo shops and they were both confident they would find my user error,
but after installing the head into their test rigs, it still refused to
boot.They shrugged -- "It's dead."

So from Mrs Squirrel's mother I received a gift of cash this Christmas
past and I bought an Alpine head from Crutchfield.com. I asked them to
find me a head fits the slot (1-space DIN), has a sub out, and that can
be powered off from the remote (i.e., from the warmth of the bed),
unlike the Kenwood unit which went into "standby" mode when told to shut
down by the remote -- and "standby" mode continued to draw over 2 amps
of current from the aux battery, so if I didn't reach up to the dash and
manually shut the thing off, the aux battery would be drawn down by more
than 16 amp-hours by morning.

This final requirement gave them some trouble, but they found that the
Alpine unit does shut down if the "off" button on the remote is held for
more than 2 seconds.

Okay, sorry, long story. Respondees are urged to trim.

My question is: The new radio has the same-sized 16-pin connector on its
rear as the older Kenwood. Is this some kind of industry-standard
connector with industry-standard wiring?

--
Jack "Rocket j Squirrel" Elliott
1984 Westfalia, auto trans,
Bend, Ore.