Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Ok, this can't be this hard. I'm open to suggestions. I'm trying to upgrade my firmware from v29 to v30.

I have a brand new 2GB MicroSD
It is formatted Fat16
At the root is PCBUFF
In PCBUFF is Einstein

With the power off and the E640 unplugged I click the card in, contacts facing the back.
I plug in the power cord, the fan starts pulsing, but no display flash.
I wait.
I wait.
Nothing. I wait a looooong time.
I unplug the unit.
I remove the card.
I plug in and power up.
Still running v29.

Any thoughts?

Nevermind...

Thought I'd post my findings in case anyone else is stuck.

Even though everything looked ok on my Mac (Disk Utility and Disk Info indicated Fat16 and the directory structure and files looked ok) it just wouldn't work. I dug out and resurrected an old netbook (I have 7 Macs here in the studio, finding a PeeCee is a chore) and reformatted and reloaded the firmware files and it worked.

How come we have to download/copy the firmware for each light?

For PC users, you do not since the .hex file in the load folder is is read only. The Macs, for some reason, choose to ignore this, and remove the read only attribute. During the firmware flash, the .hex file in the load folder gets deleted if not read only. This means you then have to reload the firmware to the card to reapply the .hex file for the next light.

If one is familiar with file moving, you can copy and paste the .hex file from the firmware folder to the load folder.

i have 2 Einsteins, one running v.26 and the other v.29. I cannot update either. The SD card clicks in (if lucky) but nothing happens when i plug in the power cord.

Any ideas,

Paul

Wow - great help everyone. I got it.

Paul

I have two v26 Einstein 640's and they updated without problem.
But with the newer strobe at v29 firmware, the v30 update just won't work.

Anyone else have this problem and find a solution?

I have reformatted the card and reinstalled software from a PC.
Since the first two strobes updated without a problem, I suspect something is amiss with the newer strobe. :-(

Odd. What brand of SD card are you using? Is the fan ramping up and down when you perform the update? Did you reload the firmware between each light, or take the card from light to light?

Its a 2GB SanDisk, so not a generic brand and specifically says SD, not SDHC, etc....
Works fine on two of the three strobes.

Yes, The fan just keeps ramping up and down.

For the first two strobes, I simply moved the card from one to the other.
But when that did not work for the third, I reformatted the card on a PC and reinstalled the files just to make sure there wasn't some corruption (such as due to static, etc...)

I tried that twice more to approach a very high level of confidence that I wasn't doing something wrong and that the card was not failing. (sorry, I work in software QA for my day job, so I tend to be rather iterative and sometimes pedantic in my approach to attacking a problem) :-)

Also note that I did have to format the card on the PC to get it to work initially on the first two strobes, so I am confident that I am using the proper procedures.

I am conversing with our engineers to see why this may happen. You may receive some emails from us for more information.