I wonder how many will ruin their SD9 while flashing the bios.

Howard Bloom · May 22, 2003

I flashed my bios tonight with the new file:

http://www.sigmaphoto.com/Html/Cameras_sd9.htm and being a networking consultant, I knew to make sure the camera was plugged in, and I turned off my virus protection while flashing. The flash took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

I expected maybe a minute tops for the flash to download. I was very surprised at how long it took. I don't know how fast it communicates, but even moving my first 6.5 Mb file took at least a minute.

Anyone else experience a long time to flash the camera?

JIM BOSTELLE · May 22, 2003

My firewire took about 1 min. I plan to use my laptop on vacation with only a USB and I figure I'll just plug the camera into a wall socket and read a good book, while downloading my shots. Jim

Howard Bloom said:
I flashed my bios tonight with the new file:
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/Html/Cameras_sd9.htm and being a
networking consultant, I knew to make sure the camera was plugged
in, and I turned off my virus protection while flashing. The flash
took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM
laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the
instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot
of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

I expected maybe a minute tops for the flash to download. I was
very surprised at how long it took. I don't know how fast it
communicates, but even moving my first 6.5 Mb file took at least a
minute.

Anyone else experience a long time to flash the camera?

whiteOrangedesign · May 22, 2003

Do yourself a favor and get a CF to PCMCIA adapter. They are cheap enough and will save you tons of time.

JIM BOSTELLE said:
Howard Bloom said:

I flashed my bios tonight with the new file:
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/Html/Cameras_sd9.htm and being a
networking consultant, I knew to make sure the camera was plugged
in, and I turned off my virus protection while flashing. The flash
took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM
laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the
instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot
of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

I expected maybe a minute tops for the flash to download. I was
very surprised at how long it took. I don't know how fast it
communicates, but even moving my first 6.5 Mb file took at least a
minute.

Anyone else experience a long time to flash the camera?

Click to expand...

--

http://www.whiteorangedesign.com/

Dominic Groß · May 22, 2003

I can only second that!

whiteOrangedesign said:
JIM BOSTELLE said:

Howard Bloom said:

I flashed my bios tonight with the new file:
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/Html/Cameras_sd9.htm and being a
networking consultant, I knew to make sure the camera was plugged
in, and I turned off my virus protection while flashing. The flash
took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM
laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the
instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot
of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

I expected maybe a minute tops for the flash to download. I was
very surprised at how long it took. I don't know how fast it
communicates, but even moving my first 6.5 Mb file took at least a
minute.

Anyone else experience a long time to flash the camera?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--

http://www.whiteorangedesign.com/

--
http://www.domgross.de
please don't run away because of the cheap design of the first page

ICQ UIN: 289647506

Dominic Groß · May 22, 2003

USB is d*mn slow with this cam, better forget about this possibility asap...

Howard Bloom said:
I flashed my bios tonight with the new file:
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/Html/Cameras_sd9.htm and being a
networking consultant, I knew to make sure the camera was plugged
in, and I turned off my virus protection while flashing. The flash
took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM
laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the
instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot
of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

I expected maybe a minute tops for the flash to download. I was
very surprised at how long it took. I don't know how fast it
communicates, but even moving my first 6.5 Mb file took at least a
minute.

Anyone else experience a long time to flash the camera?

--
http://www.domgross.de
please don't run away because of the cheap design of the first page

ICQ UIN: 289647506

Howard Bloom · May 22, 2003

I just bought a Sandisk PCMCIA card reader. It has to be as fast or faster than firewire.

The USB is torture.

JIM BOSTELLE said:
Howard Bloom said:

I flashed my bios tonight with the new file:
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/Html/Cameras_sd9.htm and being a
networking consultant, I knew to make sure the camera was plugged
in, and I turned off my virus protection while flashing. The flash
took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM
laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the
instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot
of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

I expected maybe a minute tops for the flash to download. I was
very surprised at how long it took. I don't know how fast it
communicates, but even moving my first 6.5 Mb file took at least a
minute.

Anyone else experience a long time to flash the camera?

Click to expand...

Just Looking · May 22, 2003

Howard Bloom said:
Anyone else experience a long time to flash the camera?

Fascinating question! The firmware is only about 2 MB, so 40 minutes does not sound at all reasonable. That's way slower than the slow downloads that USB users have experienced. Maybe the USB hiccups and restarts a lot?

Anybody else tried USB firmware update?

j

Alexander Toth · May 23, 2003

40 minutes also for me, very very very ... slow!

I use a firewire Lexar CF reader in my desktop and a CF-PCMCIA adapter in my laptop to transfer X3F files. In this camera USB is completely useless!

Joseph S Wisniewski · May 23, 2003

Howard Bloom said:
I just bought a Sandisk PCMCIA card reader. It has to be as fast
or faster than firewire.

The USB is torture.

Benchmark it, and let us know what you get.

Supposedly, PCMCIA readers work over 16 bit PCMCIA mode, and only pull about 1.2 megabytes/sec from the card, about the same as "regular USB". That's "10x", the way CF card manufacturers rate such things.

We're just beginning to see cards that use the higher speed 32 bit mode.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0305/03050801askacf32acardbus.asp

This gets you up to 5 megabytes/sec, 40x, as fast as the fastest CF cards.

--
Ciao!

Joe

Joseph S Wisniewski · May 23, 2003

Howard Bloom said:
The flash
took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM
laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the
instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot
of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

I would hope they're doing something to protect the camera. It's got a lot more RAM than flash, so you would expect the flashing software to build its file system inage in RAM, check, check, and double check it before actually writing to flash.

And you'd also expect there to be some sort of protected "boot block" which doesn't get rewritten during flash upgrades, so you'd always have enough firmware in the camera to try flashing again.

--
Ciao!

Joe

Kendall Helmstetter Gelner · May 23, 2003

Joseph S. Wisniewski said:
Howard Bloom said:

The flash
took almost 40 minutes via the USB - I only have USB on my IBM
laptop. But I wonder if anyone knows and not from the
instructions, not to use batteries while flashing? I can see a lot
of cameras made useless by someone who flashes while on battery.

Click to expand...

I flashed mine on battery (I read the directions beforehand but I knew I had a good charge). No problems for me...

Using the firewire cable, it just took a few minutes to finish the update. So, it can be done...

--
---> Kendall

Dominic Groß · May 24, 2003

why all the people out there still use USB with the Camera. The 15$ for a Firewire card are not that big investment...

--
http://www.domgross.de
please don't run away because of the cheap design of the first page

ICQ UIN: 289647506

rick decker · May 24, 2003

I personally prefer it as I can examine each pixel as it goes from card to disk. If I do a camera-to-disk connection, I can edit each one!!!

Dominic Groß said:
why all the people out there still use USB with the Camera. The 15$
for a Firewire card are not that big investment...

--
http://www.domgross.de
please don't run away because of the cheap design of the first page
ICQ UIN: 289647506

--

.......Feel The Power.........Sigma.....SD9..........

http://www.lightreflection.com
http://www.silveroaksranch.com
http://www.pbase.com/rickdecker
http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/user_home

Howard Bloom · May 28, 2003

Because some of use, use a laptop with no firewire.

Dominic Groß said:
why all the people out there still use USB with the Camera. The 15$
for a Firewire card are not that big investment...

--
http://www.domgross.de
please don't run away because of the cheap design of the first page
ICQ UIN: 289647506

Dominic Groß · May 28, 2003

Ok I got a noname PCMCIA Firewire card for about 50 $ and that was 2 years ago. The ones from the big brands are expensive (89 euro for an adaptec, 99 for a belkin) but they carry the same Texas Instruments chipset than the cheaper no name ones. So I would not worry too much about getting a cheap one (I saw some here in germany for (1 Euro = 1,1752 US$) 35-45 US$ now).

Howard Bloom said:
Dominic Groß said:

why all the people out there still use USB with the Camera. The 15$
for a Firewire card are not that big investment...

--
http://www.domgross.de
please don't run away because of the cheap design of the first page
ICQ UIN: 289647506

Click to expand...

--
http://www.domgross.de
please don't run away because of the cheap design of the first page

ICQ UIN: 289647506

acanthusarch · May 28, 2003

firmware took 40 seconds via firewire for me.

USB 2.0 CF Reader clears my 512MB cards in 2 minutes.
Firewire to camera takes about 4-6 mins per 512MB if I remember.

On the laptop the $7 Sandisk PCMCIA adapter takes about 11 mins per 512MB I think. Again it's been a while since I've used anything other than Card Reader.

I also use a 20GB Archos Multimedia to upload my CF cards onto in the filed. When connected to the PC via USB 2 it transfers about 10GB in 12 minutes.

Matt Cham · May 29, 2003

USB 1.0 = 12 Megabits per second
USB 2.0 = 450 Megabits per second
Firewire = 400+ Megabits per second

Note that 8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte.

To transfer 2 Megabytes worth of data over
USB 1.0 should theoretically take less than
2 seconds (2 SECONDS !!!).

Is the SD9 USB interface universally
defective? Maybe the controller chips
are bad (in all SD9's)?

Granted the flashing process takes time,
but with know from firewire that this
time is factually no more than 40 seconds.

whiteOrangedesign · May 29, 2003

Also I don't think it's common for anyone to get 450 mbps on USB 2.0. Much more common to approach sustained top speeds on Firewire.

Matt Cham said:
USB 1.0 = 12 Megabits per second
USB 2.0 = 450 Megabits per second
Firewire = 400+ Megabits per second

Note that 8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte.

To transfer 2 Megabytes worth of data over
USB 1.0 should theoretically take less than
2 seconds (2 SECONDS !!!).

Is the SD9 USB interface universally
defective? Maybe the controller chips
are bad (in all SD9's)?

Granted the flashing process takes time,
but with know from firewire that this
time is factually no more than 40 seconds.

--

http://www.whiteorangedesign.com/

acanthusarch · May 29, 2003

USB is shared bandwidth, so if any other devices are present it divides this up, plus there’s overhead that clogs up the pipes. As far as USB 2.0 vs Firewire, I think I read an article somewhere about these never being equal by design. Firewire was designed for streaming large amounts of data (ie DV) whereas USB 2.0 is more for peripherals - the next logical step up from USB 1.1.

whiteOrangedesign said:
Matt Cham said:

USB 1.0 = 12 Megabits per second
USB 2.0 = 450 Megabits per second
Firewire = 400+ Megabits per second

Note that 8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte.

To transfer 2 Megabytes worth of data over
USB 1.0 should theoretically take less than
2 seconds (2 SECONDS !!!).

Is the SD9 USB interface universally
defective? Maybe the controller chips
are bad (in all SD9's)?

Granted the flashing process takes time,
but with know from firewire that this
time is factually no more than 40 seconds.

Click to expand...

--

http://www.whiteorangedesign.com/

whiteOrangedesign · May 29, 2003

I think I read the same article you are talking about. It may have been linked by someone on here. I didn't remember about the sharing though. That makes sense in terms of the slow down. Especially if you are using a USB hub.

acanthusarch said:
whiteOrangedesign said:

Matt Cham said:

USB 1.0 = 12 Megabits per second
USB 2.0 = 450 Megabits per second
Firewire = 400+ Megabits per second

Note that 8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte.

To transfer 2 Megabytes worth of data over
USB 1.0 should theoretically take less than
2 seconds (2 SECONDS !!!).

Is the SD9 USB interface universally
defective? Maybe the controller chips
are bad (in all SD9's)?

Granted the flashing process takes time,
but with know from firewire that this
time is factually no more than 40 seconds.

Click to expand...

--

http://www.whiteorangedesign.com/

Click to expand...

--

http://www.whiteorangedesign.com/

I wonder how many will ruin their SD9 while flashing the bios.

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