I have problems upgrading my mkI. The serial port seems to drop characters and as such the upgrade always fails. I've tried on lots of hardware/os combinations and my mkII works fine and the mkI always fails. Leads me to think the serial port is broken in the mkI.

I was wondering what my options were. Can I pull the drive and attach it to my PC and upgrade that way? Any other inspired suggestions?

Cheers,
Sue.

Upgrades have a lot to do with chaging what's stored in the flash memory of the player, so you won't be able to upgrade by pulling the hard drive out...

The most obvious problem would be if your baud rates were mismatched between the player and the computers you were using. Perhaps someone messed with your Mark 1 and set it to something funky? Bad cables are also an option, but RS232(serial) is a very forgiving protocol, you wouldn't beleive what i've seen it run over... Can you post a boot log so we can see what the dropped characters look like?

Matthew

Are you using the same serial cable with the Mk1 as you were using with the Mk2? In both cases, are the players plugged directly into the cable (good), or are you using the docking sled (bad)?

If so, I would say that a harware problem is a possibility and should be investigated. If that's true, then no amount of "fiddling" will fix the problem short of repairing the serial port fault. Upgrades require the serial port, period, and if that's faulty then there's nothing else you can do.

Are you sure it's not just a frayed cable displaying intermittent problems? For instance, maybe the mk1 and the mk2 are on different parts of your desk, and stretching the cable the extra 12 inches to reach the Mk1 is causing the cable to lose data?

I've included a boot log from my mkI.

The mkI has characters missing in lines 60 and 68.

I guessing that this is what is giving me the problem upgrading. If it is something more obvious, feel free to hit me with the clue stick!

Cheers,
Sue.

I've included a boot log from my mkI.
The mkI has characters missing in lines 60 and 68.

I don't see characters missing on those lines. Did you mean that this is your Mk2 boot log? If so, please post your Mk1 boot log.

I mean for example the line that says
No secondary hard disStarting player

This should (and sometimes does) say
No secondary hard disk
Press 'q' now to go into development mode.
Starting player

Sue

Believe it or not, I think that's actually normal in many cases and does not indicate a problem with the serial port.

Please try the following:

- Re-download the MK1 .upgrade file for beta13 using something like GetRight. This is to make sure it's not corrupted.

- Make sure it's the Mk1 version of the file, identifiable by "Car1" in its file name.

- Plug the Mk1 into the serial port.

- Unplug its AC adapter power.

- Double click on the Mk1 upgrade file.

- Only when the software prompts you to do so, and not before, apply power to the player.

OK, tried all that. When I apply power to the player, the upgrader doesn't seem to find it. The "Finding unit" message just stays on and the player boots normaly and starts playing.

To check my sanity I just upgraded my mkII using the same serial cable on the same computer. No problem.

Sue.

Hmm. Could be a problem with the port, then, I guess. I'd say contact support.