40-150 f2.8 bricked by EM1mkii

Airmel wrote:

tt321 wrote:

Mark Thornton wrote:

karlreed wrote:

This can be done by booting via a pointer to the active system. The VERY LAST THING the updating s/w does is to change this pointer to point to the new systems.

That only works if you have space for both new and old to exist simultaneously. It is regrettably common to cut corners on space for firmware.

Well the other option is to keep a small bios type section which is not changed by changing FW. So if no FW is found the bios means the lens is still alive for the purpose of installing FW.

As a matter of fact, this is precisely how field firmware update is performed on millions of designs today (as well as a number of Olympus designs).

When you update your Olympus camera via the SD card method, there is a small, unalterable portion of the boot code which searches the SD card for a particular filename and if found, calls the updater.

Apparently, the above scheme is not robust enough to update an inert lens, which is unfortunate. However, it is the reality we must all face.

So why are Panasonic able to do it this way? No computer and USB connection involved, just an SD card in the camera and so long as the camera battery is working and lens to camera connection is fine, everything is fine.

Expanding this requirement to include the further requirement of USB connection to computer working and computer software working seems to cause more of these bricks being produced.

Most people have something wrong with their computer which causes crashes of software at some frequency. Most people have nothing wrong with their camera which rarely, if ever, crashes.