Satnav update

[pne]

I tried to update my satnav's firmware again, and this time it didn't stay stuck on 0% but went up. (Not monotically(?), but generally upwards.) And at the end, it reached 100%, asked me to disconnect the device to restart it, switch it off, reconnect it... and when I pressed "Done" after it had re-established communications, it said, "Your software is currently up-to-date."

So I hope that's fixed it.

Comments

[sophie]

I would guess it has, yes. I'm glad you were able to use it again. :) I must say that I'm incredibly surprised that the Garmin updater didn't make sure the download was fully complete before starting to update the firmware; that sounds rather irresponsible of them. You might want to write to them and let them know that it's a bad idea not to do that.

Oh, and if by 'not monotically' you mean that the bar went up sometimes fast and sometimes slow, I'd say 'not steadily' instead. :)

[pne]

I must say that I'm incredibly surprised that the Garmin updater didn't make sure the download was fully complete before starting to update the firmware; that sounds rather irresponsible of them.

Indeed. Especially given the huge amount of free storage the internal flash memory appears to have when connected via USB -- the firmware could be stored as a file on the device and then updated once it's been written completely, or something.

I also wonder why more devices don't do what an old motherboard of mine did -- it had two BIOS chips, and if something went wrong re-flashing the BIOS (or even if flashing went fine, but the new firmware had a bug or something in it), you could switch to the other, known-good one.

So something like that would be handy here, too, so that you couldn't brick your satnav/phone/whatever so easily since you could simply switch over to the backup firmware (which would initially be a copy of the factory default).

Oh, and if by 'not monotically' you mean that the bar went up sometimes fast and sometimes slow

No, I meant that it went something like 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 3 - 4 ... 80 - 81 - 82 - 83 - 84 - 85 - 86 - 87 - 78 - 79 - 80 ... 99 - 100.

I've no idea why it did that, sometimes falling back a bit before continuing upwards.

[sophie]

For the record, I also have a Garmin GPS - an Oregon 550t that I was given for Christmas. When I updated its firmware, it seemed to do the "store as a file on the internal memory and apply it on reboot after a consistency check" thing, so I guess different GPSes work in different ways.

But really, I wasn't even going that far - just making sure that the file is complete on the PC hard drive before it even goes to the GPS would be better, and would work even when the device has no internal memory (since for firmware updates you can't rely on the GPS having a memory card in it).

I've no idea on why the bar might have fallen back, though.