Firmware Upgrades Creating Doorstops? 69
Michael Droettboom asks: "I recently purchased a Linksys WMLS11B. Nice enough unit for the money. One gotcha, though: when upgrading the firmware (past its refundable date where I bought it), my machine crashed, turning the WMLS11B into a doorstop along with it. Linksys has offered to replace the unit, but I don't want it if the box is so easily corrupted. I have always been on a strict policy of updating firmware on all my devices, but was wondering if anyone else has had experience with devices so broken as to not recover from a broken upgrade?"
Just reflash it... (Score:2, Interesting)
If not, bring on the soldering iron and fix it properly.
Re:Just reflash it... (Score:2)
Re:Just reflash it... (Score:1)
They were, but for "other" reasons, JTAG hardware and software has come down in price. Down to $0 in the case of Jkeys (can't link it due to DMCA), and about $1 in parts (if you build the crappy 5 resistor model) or $5 in parts (if you build the proper buffered model).
Here's a JTAG [udev.org] unit you can build yourself for next to nothing.
DCMA? (Score:2)
Re:DCMA? (Score:1)
Upgrading... (Score:5, Insightful)
Next: Did you know that D-Link has a three year warranty on their stuff? I just found out today while RMA'ing a few 810+ bridges.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Upgrading... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Upgrading... (Score:2)
Re:Upgrading... (Score:2)
That's like saying that you should never install OS security patches until someone has broken into your PC and that you should never update your anti-virus software unless your computer has become infected with a virus.
Umm. No. If your OS has a security problem (IE: A Bug) then you need to update it because it's broken. Downloading Anti-Virus Definition Lists is not updating, it's keeping your virus definiti
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Wha? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wha? (Score:1)
Re:Wha? (Score:2)
Re:Wha? (Score:2)
Re:Wha? (Score:2)
Never blame bad design on the user! (Score:3, Informative)
Example: All Compaq desktop and server machines have had a feature sinced at least 1990 that allows you to recover from a bad firmware flash. Not too many folks new about it. Basically, you could throw all the dip switches on SWB6 on, and the machine could boot to read firmware from a floppy. The prompt was beeps, but it wor
Re:Never blame bad design on the user! (Score:2)
Face it.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most, if not all things made for consumers are made with this lack of quality in mind. Motherboards at least have a replaceable chip (unlike some dell models). Some high-ish quality X86 boards have 2 bioses that keep a known good copy on second chip.
You must be aware that most devives with updateable firmware also suffer this.. problem. Some older graphics cards actually had removable Bioses, as well did scsi cards.
Once device I know that does not have this problem is the stable hardware on teh Compaq Proliant servers. There's extremly stable text mode drivers along with keyboard imput and ide drivers. You update the upgradeable bioses on the hard drive. Something causes problems? Reload from cd and redo the "bios" partition.
Lucent USB wifi modules also do something similar... The driver for the host computer updates "onload" the firmware. A firmware updfate on those are as simple as telling the driver to upload this file instead of this other file.
Dear Slashdot (Score:1, Funny)
same thing (Score:2)
Re:same thing (Score:2)
Most vendors have clear disclaimers (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you've read in the changelog that it patches a hole/bad code or adds functionality that you need, don't take the chance that it's going to crater. Even if your vendor is nice enough to replace the component out of warranty, you're still going to be inconvenienced waiting.
Re:Most vendors have clear disclaimers (Score:2)
Oddly enough, when you call tech support, one of the first things that they ask you to do is upgrade the firmware!
Indeed (Score:5, Informative)
Really though, I wouldn't bitch about the device not being able to recover itself. Adding on self-healing abilities (Basically fixing end user screw ups) adds parts to the device, which adds to the cost. It is a *consumer* level device, remember, so price is the big concern. Stop whining and get a new one - you screwed it up, the company isn't to blame here.
Re:Indeed (Score:2, Informative)
The truth is, the majority of people adventurous enough to flash their bios are more
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what do you think would constitute good customer service on their part if replacing a dead unit with a working one isn't to your satisfaction? Just what do you want out of Linksys? Blood?
If Linksys told you to go take a running jump and were of no help whatsoever I'd understand you having a beef with them but they've done what they should do in this situation and yet you're still not happy.
There's no pleasing some people.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:1)
This reminds me, it's the weekend, need to run emerge -uUD world...
Re:WTF? (Score:1)
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called "you get what you pay for".
If you buy something cheap, expect it to *BE* cheap. Don't bitch and whine when you find out that it hasn't got the features of a more expensive unit.
Adding a backup firmware would increase the cost of the unit. Consumers want it cheap, so the manufacturers leave it out to make the consumers happy.
It's simple economics.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
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Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Supermicro (Score:1)
Supermicro motherboards had something like this for years. If your BIOS is corrupt you put in a floppy with a new image and hold down some special key combo to activate the emergency flash feature.
Only had to use it once, on a test system, saved me the time of having to find anoth
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Uh, how about making hardware that can't be destroyed by normal user behavior? Just a thought.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Two questions. (Score:2)
2. Why didn't you buy hardware that had that feature to begin with.
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Re:Two questions. (Score:1)
Re:Two questions. (Score:2)
Ukranian hackers? Backdoor access to his router, internet connection and personal network?
Firstly, it was a freaking wireless music player, not a router. Secondly, even if it was, how does that give "Ukranian" hackers access to his personal network? I've never seen a hardware router that could sniff packets or would divulge any personal information, or connect to other computers on the network in file retreival mode (the closest thing to this is passive upload TFTP). The best they could do
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Re:Two questions. (Score:1)
Lets see - your computer dies during flash update of some device. Just about whose fault is that? The company is willing to replace the unit - you should be happy they didn't tell you to fuck off.
Heh... I have a story (Score:1)
Similar experience with MSI motherboard (Score:2)
I decided to roll back to the previous version of the BIOS,
Re:Similar experience with MSI motherboard (Score:1)
There is a possibility that the new bios also updates the code for the IDE controller which your older OS driver do not know how to handle...
Re:Similar experience with MSI motherboard (Score:2)
I've just had to reinstall everything over the weekend because the 320b version of the IDE drivers would just not uninstall. (the system would freeze as soon as I would dare try to touch the main dll)
Here's the story [viaarena.com]
Re:Similar experience with MSI motherboard (Score:2)
1. Get an image of a Win98 emergency repair disk (the one which includes CD-ROM drivers). These can sometimes be found online, or ask a friend.
2. Prepare a CD containing the BIOS update program, the new BIOS and a copy of the old BIOS.
3. Use the image of the win98 floppy as an El-Torito boot image on your CD.
4. Burn it, and voila! Instant DOS boot disk which doesn't require a floppy drive.
Touchy! (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience with Linksys routers says "buy from them next time because you know their stuff works." Now you add to that, "they'll replace the hardware even if the screwup wasn't their fault." Sounds pretty positive to me.
Re:Touchy! (Score:2)
They certainly exist.
The Ascend Pipeline ISDN routers had enough flash space for two ROM images. When upgrading, it would write the new image into unused space; only when it was fully uploaded and verified would it mark it as the active image.
It's also perfectly possible to put a simple boot loader in ROM that has just enough brains to either
Re:Touchy! (Score:2)
I think that the parent poster hasn't ever used real routing equipment - Linksys is hardly in the same league as Ascend (before they were bought out.) Pipeline products retailed for 5-10x what that Linksys sells for.
It's called 'you get what you pay for.' Consumer-grade stuff is cheap - when you buy it, you have to expect corners to be cut.
Re:Touchy! (Score:1)
It could be that the guys at Linksys did a full cost/benefit analysis, that they determined that the price of additional ROM or a little extra development was just more expensive than the time and money lost to support calls and free replacement hardware, and the lost consumer confidence.
But my guess is that it just didn't occur to them. They're used to making uncomplicated thing
Re:Touchy! (Score:1)
Sure they have. They operate under different names like most consumer companies. When the consumer switches to company Y, there's a chance it'll be Linksys and t
Re:Touchy! (Score:2)
Empeg car-player, Rio Karma, Rio Central -- in fact, basically the entire Empeg/Rio line, possibly even the little MP3 flash players. You have a tiny bootblock, not field-writable and only smart enough to boot or reflash the actual firmware. Many flash chips have a special block at address 0, for just this purpose, which can be made non-field-writable.
OP is right, making a device that can be doorstopped by a
IBM xSeries!! (Score:3, Interesting)
an x225 that was less than 2 weeks old had a motherboard failure, IBM sent a tech out who replaced the motherboard, all nice and good. However the last thing the tech did was flash the bios. Its the last thing the motherboard ever did too. The replacement motherboard was toast. (And believe it or not, it was the last x225 motherboard in the country at the time).
Either way, apparently the flash util erased the bios, but didn't write a new one. Now according to IBM there are procedures in place to stop that from happening and if it does happen, to recover, but none of that worked.
Afaik, when you first burn eeproms, you can mask off a region that can't be reburnt, thus allowing you to have recovery, but I'm guessing this didn't work on this system.
Either way, EIGHT days after the motherboard died, we had a replacement server. I must say though, this has been the only bad experience I've had with IBM support.
My Linksys "horror story" (Score:3, Interesting)
I updated the firmware, and afterwards, Half-Life based games would not work. I could play for up to 5 minutes, then it would halt with an "invalid packet" message of some sort.
I searched around online, and found other people with similiar problems, and forums saying that Linksys was aware of the problem, it had to do with fragmentation of large packets.
The real problem was that their web/FTP did not have any copies of the previous firmware, so I couldn't revert.
I called up tech support. Several times. Usually, the people I was talking to had strong accents that made them hard to understand. On top of that, when I called and asked for the previous firmware, they were basically going to the FTP site themselves, and emailing me a file (that I could have easily downloaded, and was not the correct file).
I started off polite, the first few phone conversations. Several phone conversations (and two days after I first called), this is what my side of the conversation sounded like:
"I have VERSION 3 of the BEFSR81, do you understand? Yes, I have been to your FTP site, and looked all over it. I do not want the firmware for version 2 of the router. If you read its text file, it SPECIFICALLY SAYS IT WILL NOT WORK WITH VERSION 3."
Several hours later, what do I get, but yet another copy of version 2 firmware that won't work on my router.
Erase the firmware (Score:1)
recovery procedure (Score:2)