[Elecraft] Fwd: K3 Failed DSP Firmware Download

[Jack Brabham]

Grant,


On 2/6/2011 8:20 AM, Grant Youngman wrote:
> It seems to be very few people that have a problem updating firmware.
Hardly a day goes by that there is not at least one  "firmware download 
problem" string running on the reflector.

> And it's amazing that it still gets blamed on the Utility, the radio, file integrity, whatever.  Of course it could be any of these, but that isn't nearly as likely as a broken USB/RS232 driver.  Most of us have never had a problem that wasn't quickly resolved -- typically by ensuring that the drivers for the USB adapters are current and are properl installed.

Most of these USB/serial adapters work just fine for any purpose except 
K3 downloads.  Mine is embedded in my microHam microKeyer II, and works 
perfectly for any other use.   The issue is not a USB driver problem and 
will not be fixed by reloading the driver.   It is a problem with the K3 
bootstrap loader lacking the intelligence to ignore commands it isn't 
expecting, and just locking up if it gets one, at least in the case of 
my particular interface.

You have to consider the Bootstrap loader and the K3 utility as a 
system.  And as a system they don't work very well.  If everything is 
not just perfect the load fails and the radio goes brain dead.

> The thing to do here is not to give up or update firmware 'once a year', but to clean up your PC (which if it's anything like mine, is probably a horrendous mess of stuff, corruptions in the Registry, who know what?), uninstall and clean reinstall the drivers (paying attention to the instructions), and do it again.  Punching buttons on the radio, or blaming it on not having a "real" RS-232 port or simply not solving the problem and then grumbling about it every time it doesn't work won't help much :-)
Your station PC may be full of garbage but mine isn't.  It also does not 
have a free slot that I'm willing to dedicate to a serial board that is 
only needed once or twice a year.

It amazes me to see the lengths some people on this board go to, to 
blame the K3's problems on anything but the K3.   This firmware loading 
system needs to be improved.   The problem is not the entire rest of the 
world, it is the K3.   Ignoring the problem will not make it go away, 
however not doing the updates will.

How many potential K3 owners check out this board and see the continuous 
running "failed firmware download" dialogs, and think........."well... 
maybe not".

73 Jack KZ5A


> Grant/NQ5T
>
>
>
>
> On Feb 6, 2011, at 7:54 AM, R. Kevin Stover wrote:
>
>> I would.
>> I don't now the inner workings of the utility but I assume there's
>> something built in to check file integrity before the upgrade process.
>> If not then that would be something to seriously think about adding.
>> Easy enough to check MD5sums.
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