can't update firmware any more

Hi all

Some years ago I got my quad (HW 2.6) and I installed the firmware from Marco Sinatti, wich corrected some bugs and added XY mode that was missing at that time on the original firmware.

Yesterday I wanted to give a try to gabonator firmware, and tried to install it. Copied files in the requested orders to the DFU disk, got .RDY files like if everything was OK, but the when I reboot the Quad… nothing changed. Still Marco’s firmware.

So I tried to re-install the original firmware, I tried to downgrade the original firmware, I tried to install other apps in others slots, everytime it does the same thing : got the .RDY like it’s ok, but nothing change after reboot.

Do I need to replace the bootloader with a usb/ttl serial converter ?

Please if someone have any idea on how to solve that issue…

well in fact I was able to install PAWN on slot 4, and update logic analyser on slot 3, so it’s only the main app I can’t update.

I also don’t understand why this time installing logic analyser and pawn worked, as it didn’t some hours ago…

Then I tried to install gabonator firmware on all 4 slots, no luck. Nothing changed at all on the 4 slots, logic analyser and pawn are still there, slot 2 is still empty and slot 1 still use Marco’s firmware.

This sounds a bit more like a problem with the file you are trying to load rather than the loading itself. I can’t think of a simple mechanism whereby the DFU would update some slots and not others.

Are you sure you have a valid Gabonator Hex file? Note that the DFU may label the file with .RDY even if it has not done much.

The other thing about the Gabonator App is that it does use the ‘unofficial’ extra 256k ROM available in most DSO QUADs. There is a separate test program that checks that this is working so that might be worth trying. However, even if it wasn’t then I wouldn’t expect the load to leave everything the same.

Well I tried every firmware I can find, neither gabonator or the officials ones does anything. I tried every version of the official one, nothing changed. Always .RDY after copy to the DFU (when the hex file was OK, of course. Some wrong download from github gave me .ERR sometimes), but never seen anything changing.
I also tried to downgrade Marco’s firmware, same result.

I also tried to install Tetris, wich should install on slot 4, but nothing. Then I tried PAWN, and it installed OK on slot 4. So again I tried tetris : nothing, pawn still here.

This night I will try to reflash bootloader, I just found my serial ttl converter.

So the Tetris image never worked and still does not work? That sounds more like broken .hex or something than bootloader trouble.

ok, here are the news : I use linux on my computer. So I’ve just tried with a winXP install in a virtual machine to copy files to the DFU, and this time, it worked almost normally, I was able to run tetris, to install community firmware (but I don’t know if there is some bug in it but it is almost unusable due to navigation problems, I ended up re-installing Marco’s one), but not to install gabonator firmware.

The file starts to copy, and when it get to 50%, dfu’s disk disconnects, then reconnects with a .ERR file, and when I try to boot the DSO, I got a blank screen and a continous beeeeeeep…

The interresting thing is it does the exact same thing with pawn (disk disconnects after 50% copy), but pawn seems to work ok after reboot.

When I used linux to copy the same file, it copies fine, then I have a .RDY, but nothing was installed.
Here it starts to copy, then fail, but something incomplete is really installed.

I’ll try with another computer…

ok, so with another real winXP computer (not a virtual machine) gabonator firmware installed fine. Problem solved.

In conclusion, it’s almost impossible to use anything other than a winXP machine to get DFU to work properly.

well, problem not really solved : I installed again (from the XP computer) the community app with recommeded sys and fpga, this time it worked fine, but… gabonator on slot 2 no longer work (nothing happens when pressing square button at boot, only boot screen with logo and serial num), and logic analyser on slot 3 does not boot, and there is a “SYS License error” that appears above the logo.

Pawn on slot 4 still works.

So I re-installed gabonator app on slot 2, it works again, but then main app on slot 1 does not boot anymore (logo screen, with a continuous beep).
Pawn on slot 4 still works.

I re-installed community app, gabonator does not boot

I re-installed gabonator, but this time on slot 3 and… this time it works ok AND main app on slot 1 works ! And pawn on slot 4 stil works.

So there is some incompatibility between gabonator app on slot 2 and comunity app on slot 1…

The behaviour you see with the slots now is normal.

Each APP slot allows for up to 32Kbytes of program code. A main scope APP like the stock one, community or Wildcat is just under 64 Kbytes so takes up 2 slots. So when you load it into slot 1 then in reality it is using slot 1 and 2.

If you then load something into slot 2 then you have overwritten the second half of the APP and it no longer works. If you reload it back into slot 1 then it will work again but you will have overwritten whatever was in slot 2.

So with normal programs there is in reality space for about 3 APPS; One main scope APP (taking 2 adjacent slots) and 2 other smaller APPS of less than 32 Kbytes.

Gabonator is a bit different. It is actually quite a big program but only ‘takes’ up 1 APP slot. That is because it loads a lot of its code into the ‘spare’ 256K byte space that is not part of the normal 4 slots and is only there because the processor supplied actually has more space than advertised. BY putting it in slot 3 you are not overwriting anything from the main scope APP occupying slot 1 AND 2.

DFU normally also works fine with Windows 7 machines. It can be problematic with Windows 8 and 8.1.

ok, thank you for these clarifications !