Hi,
First of all, I would like to apologize if this has already been covered. I spent the last 4 hours reading through the FAQ, searching the forums, and tinkering with a few different things, but have yet to make any headway with my problem...

which is...

I have a RioCar unit that has v1.02 software on it. I tried upgrading to 2.0, but the upgrade failed in the middle, right after "Erasing Flash (Kernel)" completes, but before "Programming Flash (Kernel)" even starts... I get "Flash program failed at stage 0x11". Now the unit just sits there with the light fading off and on. When the unit boots, Hyperterminal shows the "If anyone here wishes to upgrade firmware" message, then "Copying linux kernel", then "Calling linux kernel"...or something of that nature. Then the unit just sits there doing nothing...I expect because there is no kernel.

I have tried...

* Waiting to power up the unit until the upgrade software asks me to. I get the same results as the first time I ran the upgrade...failure @ programming flash (kernel).
* three different serial cables, and four different com ports (two of the com ports in my system are on a digi expansion board)
* the developer, builder and consumer versions of the .upgrade.
* finding v1.03 to try installing that (or even v1.02 again), but can't find them anywhere

I am going to take my unit to work tomorrow and try the same thing there, but I'm not very sure that's going to help.

Any help anyone can offer would be very much appreciated...even if it's just a link to RTFM

Thanks for checking the FAQ first. Before giving up assuming that it's something electronic (like bad flash RAM), please check the following:

- Make sure there is nothing grabbing the COM port such as Palm synch software or UPS software.

- Try it on a completely different computer.

- See if you can squirt a Hijack kernel onto the player with my Logo Editor.

Thanks! I was able to intall a Hijack kernel using your logo editor, and the unit came back up to right where it was before. Is it now safe to install the kernel.v2final.mk2.zImage using your logo editor as well?

Again, thanks for the help.

Keep in mind that a kernel is not the whole upgrade. It's only the flash RAM half of the upgrade.

What you're sitting on now is a half-and-half: The hard disk contains the version 1.02 player software, and the flash RAM contains a version 2.0 kernel. That's *bad*.

You need to get the "upgrade" file to work right, so that there is not a mismatch between the kernel and the player software.

At this point we have ruled out hardware trouble. In other words, the player has the ability to fully flash the kernel. So now we have to find out why the .upgrade file isn't working. Perhaps it's this problem?

Also make sure to install the latest Emplode first, so that you're sure you've got the latest version of the upgrader software as described here.

The Hijack kernel (if it's the most recent) is actually better / newer than the v2final kernel. No need to replace it.

But as Tony says, that's only a small piece of the v2final upgrade. Try the upgrade again, using the .upgrade wizard under win98 or newer.

Or if you have Linux, skip all that stuff, and use the ethernet upgrade tool I wrote -- much faster, and it avoids the buggy serial upgrader woes.

Cheers

Success!

My system @ work was able to successfully upgrade the software. Everything matches now. Yaaay!

Thank you so much for all of your help.

Still doesn't answer the question as to why the upgrader didn't work on your home system while the logo editor did work. What was done differently between the two systems? Did you download the "upgrade" file again from the work computer? Did you install a different version of emplode on the work computer than the home computer? Are they running different operating systems?

Yes, the essential question remains unanswered...

The system @ home is a piece of crap. Almost literally. The only reason I have it is because my place of business wants me to run some form of windows to connect to our VPN. It is running Windows 2000 Professional with current patches/service packs, etc... I tried downloading the .upgrade files NUMEROUS times, all with identically the same failed result.

The system @ work is a newer Dell system running Windows XP Professional. I downloaded a new .upgrade file from empeg.com this morning from this system (I'm @ work now).

They both have the same version of emplode (I uninstalled the v1.02 completely before installing on the system @ home).

I should probably try using one of my linux boxes for this sort of thing, eh? I've just found in the past that emplode works better than emptool for song management, playlist creation, etc, so I figured the windows-based software upgrade should work just fine!

If you want more specific info on the systems or anything just let me know. I'm sure I'm not giving you what you wanted to know

I tried downloading the .upgrade files NUMEROUS times, all with identically the same failed result.

Did you use the same method each time? For instance, if you used Netscape to download them instead of IE, there is a chance it may have ASCII-corrupted the file if the server's MIME types weren't set correctly. That's why I keep suggesting to use GetRight, it will never ASCII-corrupt an Upgrade file.

I used IE 5.5 (I think, possibly 6.0) on my system @ home, and mozilla v1.3 on my system @ work. I can try transferring the file I have here to my home system (via ssh, of course, to avoid more possible problems) and running the upgrade again to see if that makes a difference... or install mozilla @ home and try the download again...

Whoops, misunderstood your question. Yes, I used the same method every time last night to download the .upgrade to my home system.

I can try transferring the file I have here to my home system (via ssh, of course, to avoid more possible problems) and running the upgrade again to see if that makes a difference...

Copying the "known good" file to your home computer is a good idea, but you don't need to run the upgrade to find out if it was a corrupted file. Just do a binary file compare of the file from work and the file from home. They should be identical. If they are, then it wasn't a corrupted upgrade file that was the problem.

I find the various upgrade tools to be random -- some of them work (on some machines) and others work (on the same and other) machines.

There's just something screwy in the serial programming, which I believe we (collectively) fixed once for LogoEdit, but the original tools still have the original code. That's why I broke down and implemented the ethernet upgrader -- so I can do upgrades myself!

Cheers!

I'd assume that, except for the fact that all of the people complaining about problems uploading in LogoEdit could use the regular upgrade software just fine.