40-150 f2.8 bricked by EM1mkii

Airmel wrote:

karlreed wrote:

My experience of USB connections via hubs is that they can be AWFULLY flaky. So, this needs to be kept in mind if updates must be by a direct connection to the computer, ior, internet rather than via a card.

However, best practice for this kind of update is NOT to destroy the current version until the update is complete AND the system has been re booted.

Unfortunately, most embedded systems don't have anywhere near the resources (think firmware storage space) needed to permit this duplication.

In these systems, there is usually a small portion of code designated to perform the update/re-flashing (and which is not updated in the field). That small, "update" portion of the code takes control while the main firmware package is overwritten by the new version.

The process is a lot like performing brain surgery on yourself. As with all complex things, the devil is in the details.

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.

Don't apply general purpose computer "PC" thinking to embedded systems, They are completely different.

I don't know how large the lens firmware is, but I can't imagine they are that big. Flash memory is cheap these days. My experience is with network gear (Cisco mainly), and anything made in the last 20 years can be recovered from a failed update by failing back to the previous version, or in the worst case, booting to system monitor mode. It should not be difficult to build this into cameras and lenses, nor expensive. Even if the lens just has a secondary firmware location, and a boot flag indicating which one is active, the m43 standard could incorporate a design where the camera will boot the failover version if the primary fails to boot.

Maybe it doesn't happen often enough to be a concern, I don't really know as I've only done perhaps 10 lens updates total, ever, but I always check the battery first, and wish the camera was USB chargeable (some now are), and would never go through a hub. My PCs are also on UPS so there is no chance of power loss at the PC side.

Hopefully there is a reset procedure that can be done by Olympus at minimal or no cost.