1098 upgrade procedure

**Aussie Geoff** · 04 March 2004, 09:31 Thursday

Sithlord,

I went from 1.1.6 to 2.1.1 no problems. Given that you have tried several times and (as as understand it) also tried the EEPROM again I have a worrying thought to share with you.

The EEPROM update is dependent on you typing in exactly the right start and end address for each of the 3 modules. I have always been worried about what if someone types in the wrong start address for any of the modules - essentially it looks like you will overwrite an area of memory on the EEPROM that we don't have the code for. Once this is done I do not see how you can recover from it without taking up Rotel's offer of returning to to them where the dealer / service centre can do a full EEPROM burn by copying another one (the EEPROMs are removable and a low(ish) cost device can copy one to another). The symptoms you are getting failure to get digital lock etc all look like DSP issues.

So - If you still can't get it going - I'd pop into International Dymanics and get them to re burn your EEPROM (ideally already updated) and then reload the firmware etc

Hope this helps!

Geoff

**Kevin D** · 04 March 2004, 09:40 Thursday

The EEPROM program looks pretty nice. Since we have to provide the start AND end locations and the 3 files are a known length, I would think that that was kind of a built in checksum. IE, you would have to mess up the start AND finish by the same number of bytes in the same direction to get it wrong.

Of course I don't know anyone that is going to try and see what happens with one wrong byte..

Kevin D.

**Andrew Pratt** · 04 March 2004, 12:13 Thursday

The thing thats confusing the issue for me is the update from V2.0.0 to V2.1.0. Where did this come from? It says it included Dobly Pro Logic 11x but I thought V2.1.1 did this.

I assumed it was just a middle update they did that needed refining before it was released to us as 2.1.1.

I'd reflash the EPROM and follow the start and end points to the tee then reflash the new 211 firmware and see what happens. If that doesn't do it reflash the firmware once more and if its still not working you're going to have to contact Rotel for support.

**Sithlord10** · 04 March 2004, 17:59 Thursday

Thanks guys for the feedback. Theres not much that can wrong if you type in the correct fields for the flash. A quick question, is it case sensitive? as I put all the details with caps lock on as it's displayed in the instructions. I will try to re flash the roms and put the software on for the forth time :roll: . If I get nothing then off it goes to get fixed. Thanks again for your thoughts

**Azeke** · 04 March 2004, 18:29 Thursday

Sithlord10,

Just a shot in the dark here, but power off your 1098, unplug the powercord for a few minutes, before beginning the procedure. You never know.

Good Luck,

Azeke

**Sithlord10** · 04 March 2004, 20:03 Thursday

I've tried that as well and it didn't work. I've just spoken to International Dynamics and spoke to a tech and he didn't know alot about the new upgrade particulary the Eprom updates. But after explaining the procedure to him he understood right away and asked for my serial no of my 1098. Once that was given he said that the Start and End addresses were incorrect for the Roms for my machine. He then proceeded to go to Rotels site and look for himself and he was going to download the Roms and try them out. He will call me with his findings. At the moment I'm putting 1.1.6 back on and see if that works. I'll keep you all posted and thanks for the suggestions.

Worst case senario it goes back for a full eprom burn like you said Geoff.

Update
International Dynamics called me back saying that the Roms were correct for my machine (they have the original code names Rotel renamed them) and said my install should have worked. I also told him that it takes 1hr and 10mins for the software to install using XP and he said it takes 10mins with Win98. Anyway I'm going to send the unit to them to fix, takes about 1 hour same day so that will be next Tuesday (Public Holiday Monday).It's been a week and a half without HT 8O

**Aussie Geoff** · 05 March 2004, 05:55 Friday

Sithlord10,

Interesting. A thought for the weekend - Does your XP laptop have a native serial port or are you using a USB to serial adaptor?

I know that some of them do weird things with parity bits or 7 bit ASCII rather than the 8 bits needed for an EPROM byte. It's just possible that this is right for the Hyperterminal program (which Rotel has you set all these) and wrong for the EPROM program which (may) assume things (or there could be timing errors with too long between bytes etc).

Anyway do you have any other PC you could try it with? There are several posts about people changing PC away from XP and magically having upgrades work? XP is notorious for being "difficult" in its control of serial ports.

Geoff

**Sithlord10** · 05 March 2004, 22:07 Friday

Geoff I'm not using a laptop I'm using my pc which I have to move into my lounge room just to perform these upgrades

. I downloaded a new version of Hyperterninal and the software (1.1.6 which I put back on) only took about 2min to install. Of course by this point the flashing of the eproms was not working and the 1098 wont turn on now. I've given up on the whole thing and the units going back on Tuesday to International Dynamics to get fixed. In my opinion one of the features the 1098 should have is the ability for the user to go back or allow you to reset the roms if it doesn't work. I know with computer motherboards you can reset the semos and start over. I believe getting owners to perform flash eprom changes is asking too much for a person who may or may not know computers very well. I just wish I could reverse what I've done and start over but I can't the 1098 is dead. So much for ease of use and detailed instructions. I praise Rotel for offering this upgrade to owners but I question this release as too many people are having problems. It really should be fool proof. I will be more cautious when the next software or rom flash comes out and maybe I will get the experts who design and create these wonderful upgrades to do it for me. Funny that International Dymanics hadn't heard of the upgrade until I mentioned it, not very encouraging. But on a positive note I'm happy to hear others like yourself are enjoying the wonders of Dolby11x mine will just take a little bit longer. Thanks again for your input and suggestions

**BladeRnR** · 05 March 2004, 22:10 Friday

It's BladeRnR (Sithlord's Brother). I've observed everything he's done and it was step-by-step using Rotel's instructions (Verbatim). After the 'upgrade' (Or rather downgrade as it turned out) the Optical (Any Optical) has refused to function (i.e recognize a connection/signal/device attached). If you look at the Menu you can see the Input switching from Optical(x) to Analog then back again like it's detecting it then dropping again.

Regarding Hyperterminal if you run WindowsXP. Do not use the native Hyperterminal program. It's simply a 'rehashed' version of the original NT Version and it will take you over an hour to upgrade your software (That has been our experience thus far). You can get Hyperterminal 6.3 Private Edition from the original Devlopers here http://www.hilgraeve.com/htpe/. After installing this edition of Hyperterminal we were down from over 60 minutes to a software upgrade time of a little over 3 minutes. Why the Native WinXP version drags it's feet so is beyond me (And I'm a Programmer/Developer). I suspect it's because the native WinXP version is 32-Bit and is performing some sort of conversion to 16-Bit in order to complete the upgrade. I will however confirm that hypothesis. Suffice it to say download Verison 6.3 and you'll experience zero issues with Hyperterminal on WinXP. Further, I noticed the startup of Version 6.3 is exactly the same as what is shipped with NT & Win95 so I suspect Microsoft have done 'something' to the Native version of WinXP's Hyperterminal.

Sithlord's Unit (After trying everything) has now been rendered completely unusable. The same problem is evident (No sound/signal) through the optical. Now I've been working with Comms/PC's and Computing for about 18 years now and if you deal with updating EPROM's/ROM's you should offer the User an escape route. Rotel has not done this with their Processor and thus the User is at the mercy of Human Error or other factors not immediately apparent. Why they have not provided a way to revert to a default EPROM is beyond me (Much like many modern Motherboards have - Duel BIOS). His machine now has to be shipped to International Dynamics who will perform a reprogram of the EPROM (A shame that I don't own a EPROM Programmer otherwise I'd do it myself).

As for the instructions themselves (Specifically the 2.x.x ones) I thought they were extremely misleading and open to interpretation.

As for COM Ports (@ Aussie Geoff and with the utmost of respect) they don't alter function between OS's. A COM Port is a COM Port is a COM Port. They don't 'change' function. The Program dictates the Protocol/Parity checking et all - not the COM Port. The COM Port is the communication medium (in Hardware) of the OSI Layer. It's only a dumb conduit as to what you feed down said connection. If anything I'd like to use a different Flash program but I can't find one that accepts Start/End addresses.

All in all this has been a bad experience when such an upgrade should be simplicity itself (It was twice before so what went wrong with this one?). Rotel should offer SOME kind of fallback ability with their Processor to cover a 'disaster' scenario. I'm sure the problem will be rectified and I'm in no doubt the 1098 is a fine bit of surround wizardry BUT to not offer the 'average' User the ability to step back after a failed upgrade is lunacy.

**Aussie Geoff** · 06 March 2004, 03:34 Saturday

Sithlord and BladeRnR,

I basically agree with you. I expressed my concerns to both Rotel and Andrew Pratt when the beta came out and had the 3 step EEPROM upgrade which had NO recovery option and what seemed to me lots of options for error. I also think the instructions are poor in that they had deleted the whole Hyperterrminal instructions off the web. Again – I wrote to Rotel re this and I would hope that they will fix it ASAP.

I really really hope (and recommend if Rotel read this) that:

Rotel improve the instructions to make them more seamless and add extra information such as installing the alternative Hyper Terminal program of you have problems with Windows XP etc.
Rotel add an extra file to the Web which is the full EEPROM content so that people can recover if needed.
For future upgrades Rotel tighten up the process a little (e.g. make the 3 EEPROM files and the addresses all part of a script so that they are not user enterable but happen automatically.

In terms of the COM ports – what I was trying to say (not very well) that many modern laptops don’t have a serial port they have 2-4 USB ports, requiring a USB to serial adaptor. If you had had one of those, then there is a whole raft of new exciting issues that you can get as the serial signal has to go through a USB driver before getting to the serial cable and thinks like data bits, parity bits, flow control etc can all have non standard defaults in the software based on the USB driver. It was just an idea – since I personally have had communication problems with this just for normal serial line work.

All that aside - I know you will love the upgrade when you get it - and its better (or at least no worse) than (say) a Denon AVS 1 where you need to send the unit away for weeks

Geoff

**BladeRnR** · 06 March 2004, 05:45 Saturday

I apologise if I intimated you didn't know what you were talking about Aussie Geoff (It's quite apparent from your previous posts that you do!). We've tried 2 different Desktop PC's each with COM Ports (As opposed to USB to COM) with the same result. You're quite right - such an adapter could introduce new variables which may skew the result but alas I don't have a laptop with only USB on it to prove the theory.

I'm very glad you've conveyed your thoughts regarding the Backup EPROM to Rotel. I'm wondering if this could be reverse engineered into the existing product (All it would need is some space on the EPROM to accept a Backup but I'm not sure how m uch memory the 1098 has).

The 1098 is now boxed up ready to be shipped off for a reburn and we are exceedingly disappointed it ever came to this. If computer literate Users can't do a successful upgrade then I pity those who are just following the (poor) instructions. So far Sithlord's Home Theatre has been out of action for 4 days due to this debacle along with a Power Amp issue he had with his Subwoofer. He fixed the Power Amp problem and then the 1098 packed it in :roll:

Such is life. We'll let you know how the reprogram goes mate.

**Aussie Geoff** · 06 March 2004, 07:59 Saturday

BladeRnr,

I share your frustration.

With any luck, and if International Dynamics are good for their word, you should have the RSP-1098 back on Tuesday afternoon and a real smile on your face about 1/2 hour after it is installed...

Let us all know how you go with it.

Re the backup EEPROM - my understanding is that there is not enough memory spare for this. However it would be possible (& I have suggested) to have the web site contain a full EPROM image for download so that this could be used to recover. Apparently this would loose ALL settings on the RSP-1098 - but still....

Have a great long Aussie weekend in Melbourne

Geoff

**Zzap** · 06 March 2004, 08:43 Saturday

[minor edit to post]

For future upgrades Rotel tighten up the process a little (e.g. make the 3 EEPROM files and the addresses all part of a script so that they are not user enterable but happen automatically

I'm SO glad Rotel released this software even though it's clearly directed at technical minded persons. It's an awesome responsibility to place in the hands of the regular Joe Public - so many ways to screw up the product.

Now I don't know how many EPROM updates they plan to release so I cannot evaluate the return-on-investment in getting the flash program more user friendly but that aside the first step would be to make the flash program a little more user friendly by embedding the variables (addresses and unit) in the file.

Since this would require a change in file format then tey should also consider being able to combine multiple uploads into a single file.

If a single file upload is not feasible then if my experience is true that the unit requires a little time after each upload before accepting a new upload then they should consider adding a similar delay into the program (even if it's only 30 seconds) since some users are ready to upload the next file before the unit is ready to accept it.

**BladeRnR** · 07 March 2004, 01:35 Sunday

Originally posted by Aussie Geoff

BladeRnr,

I share your frustration.

With any luck, and if International Dynamics are good for their word, you should have the RSP-1098 back on Tuesday afternoon and a real smile on your face about 1/2 hour after it is installed...

Let us all know how you go with it.

Re the backup EEPROM - my understanding is that there is not enough memory spare for this. However it would be possible (& I have suggested) to have the web site contain a full EPROM image for download so that this could be used to recover. Apparently this would loose ALL settings on the RSP-1098 - but still....

Have a great long Aussie weekend in Melbourne

Geoff

It is quite frustrating indeed. It seems everytime Sithlord upgrades to 'High-End' components they pose more of a problem than your bargain basement parts (Such is the case with high-performance PC's as well).

Not to worry as I'm sure International Dynamics will sort out his issue. It's just a pity we spend our long-weekend without the use of the Surround. We have a 2100Watt Quest Audio amp ready to go in to power his SVS B4+ and we can't even do that because he's getting an XLR to RCA made up to cater for it!

I suspect you're right about the memory size on the 1098. I'm also sure Rotel's Engineers considered a backup but might have baulked at it due to cost. It'd be nice if someone made an add-in card that could backup EPROM data (PC's have such cards on the market).

Thanks for your insight Geoff and we'll let you know how we go

**whmacs** · 07 March 2004, 17:07 Sunday

Hi BladeRnr & Sithlord,
I share your pain about the upgrade process. I've posted my experiences here, with my thoughts on how Rotel can make this more user friendly and less risky.

Cheers,
Stephen
Thornton, Australia

My Home Theatre

1098 upgrade procedure

1098 upgrade procedure

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