Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Spoke with on phone. In this case, the cards were inadvertently formatted to FAT32.

I hope this might help anyone who has the same problem updating their firmware. I'm going to go in reverse here, first describing what ultimately worked for me and then describing the symptom/problem.

- Instead of using WinZip or WinRAR to extract the .zip download, I simply used native Windows Explorer

- Instead of copying and pasting an extracted "PCBUFF" folder to the SD card, I dragged and dropped the "PCBUFF" folder I saw (after letting Windows Explorer open the zip as described above) onto the SD card.

I don't know which of the two made the difference or if both did, but the firmware upgrade on my next Einstein went quickly and smootly and exactly as described.

What was happening before when I was using WinRAR or WinZip and copying the "PCBUFF" folder to the SD card? I would insert the card into my Einstein, plug the power in, there would be a very quiet and brief "whirr" of power from the unit, and then nothing.

Before having success on my own as I described above, I ended up sending my first Einstein in thinking just maybe there was something wrong with it. The unit came back with a note that the tech loaded the firmware successfully from both his own card AND mine. That suggested pretty strongly there had to be something I was doing differently, and led me to extracting differently and putting the "PCBUFF" firmware upgrade folder onto the SD card differently.

Thank you to the PCB staff for their usual great customer service and for the quick turn around (9 days, door-to-door), and I hope the above information proves helpful to someone.

Craíg

http://www.craigwasselphotoart.com

Interesting. I am not sure what the difference would be, but I will pass this along to our programming staff. Incidentally, did you first get a failed update on the card/light combo you are referring to here? Then you did the new method to get a successful update on the same card/light combo?

Or was this the first attempt on this light/card combo?

I had tried to update both of my Einsteins prior to sending one in, and experienced the same symptom as described above on both. When I sent the first unit I included an SD card I had used to successfully upgrade my Cybercommanders, but that did not work for my Einsteins.

When my first unit came back to me yesterday there were notes from the tech saying that he loaded the firmware successfully not only with his card, but also with the card I provided. My SD card was sent back to me, so I re-extracted (using WinRAR and then WinZip) the ver 50 firmware upgrade, copied/pasted the "PCBUFF" folder to that card, and again attempted to upgrade my 2nd Einstein. I got the same result: a brief "whirr" noise from the unit, no sign of anything from the display, and then silence.

Since the tech noted he used my SD card with no issue, I was totally flummoxed. I didn't like the idea of the time and expense of sending in my 2nd unit and was extremely frustrated, but I was also convinced there was something I was doing differently. It was then that I tried opening the .zip file directly using Windows Explorer, and dragging and dropping the "PCBUFF" folder onto the SD card instead of copying and pasting it. Then it worked perfectly.

Craíg

http://www.craigwasselphotoart.com

I have 4 Einstein units w/v29. If I upgrade to v50 does that include all previous upgrades?

yes it will.

Thank you!

I updated my CC today, to firmware v. 50, and everything worked fine. I then updated one of my Einsteins, and it seemed to work ok, but now the display has a white line going through the middle of it? What the? After seeing this I did not update any of the others. Is there a way to go back to v. 31 (I think it was)? it works ok, but I hate that line!! They are brand new.

The firmware would not add the line as part of the programming. There is no way to revert to prior versions of firmware once updated to v.50.

You can try removing the power cord and reapplying it to see if the problem goes away, in case there was any weird glitch.

Also, is this line vertical or horizontal, and about where on the screen is it?

Well it was not there until I updated the firmware. I did not think it was part of your programming, lol. It's just about bisecting the screen horizontally, but I'm not there to give you an exact location. I will fire it up as soon as I get back.