Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Announcements and Press Releases => Topic started by: Senex on December 29, 2003, 03:47:22 PM
-
As bplan GmbH announces, the version of the Open Firmware shipped with the Pegasos II is faulty: after changes made by "setenv" the system does not boot anymore! You can find the needed update at http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/update_d.html (http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/update_d.html). (German; english version to follow.)
-
English version of the website online now:
http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/update_e.html (http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/update_e.html)
-
jesus christ this is one BAD bug!!! ..
wasnt this tested before the delivery was sent? , what did the beta testers do???
sorry but this is one MAJOR FLAW!..
hopefully no one ruined theyre setup with this bug..
-
Yep, it's a pretty embarassing bug, but it's not the first PPC board to need a flash update. ;)
Luckily only a few boards have yet been sent out.
-
Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk....
:python:
-
Looking at some of the text, I though that they'd shoved the lot through Altavista, but it's missing this gem of a line:
< ENTER > ton start, any OTHER key of toilet
:lol:
-
Well. at least they admit the bug and have made update available as soon as possible.
-
@alx
fantastic!
-
Its a good thing they have fixed it sofast and have an update online. I just hope they got everyone they shipped to in time before they do any harm!
-
The site has been updated now: Users who's machines are already affected can find there a way how to fix it themselves.
-
hopefully no one ruined theyre setup with this bug..
If they had im sure they would have no problem getting it replaced .
Ive seen bugs with items from nokia sony ,philips and loads of others so i would not worry as not many have been sent out and they have let people know early about the problem some large companies deny faults with there products .Firmware upgrades are needed on lots of pc boards as well so its not that bigger thing. :-)
-
The most embarrassing is that - unlike every pc since 15 years - there is no way to restore the default firmware settings...
Why the hell didn't they add some jumper or key-combination that would restore the default settings ?
This wasn't present on pegasos1... I thought it would be added on pegasos2... :-?
-
The most embarrassing is that - unlike every pc since 15 years - there is no way to restore the default firmware settings...
Have you even looked at the page? It clearly mentions a way to restore the firmware if the bug rendered your computer unbootable!
-
@Leo42
My Pegasos II system was rendered unbootable by this problem.
It was restored using the instructions at b-plan site (http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/update_e.html), and I am posting this from the Pegasos II now.
Yes, this problem was embarrassing, but if something positive should be found from this, maybe it is the fact that the fix was made available in record time.
-
Luckily the machine is easy to fix back. Would be a bitch if someone would have to send it back for this.
-
well... sending commands via serial cable in order to reset firmware is not what I would call "simple"...
It implies that you have a second (working) computer, a serial cable and the suitable software (configured properly) to be able to reset the firmware...
"a0;L;
w38806040;+;w64848000;+;w3ca0f100;+;w60a50c78;+; w7c000278;+;w7c802d2c;+;w7c0006ac;+;w3ca0f100;+; w38600014;+;w98650c7c;+;w7c0006ac;+;w3c80fff1;+; w386000aa;+;w98645555;+;w7c0006ac;+;w38a00055;+; w98a42aaa;+;w7c0006ac;+;w38c00080;+;w98c45555;+; w7c0006ac;+;w98645555;+;w7c0006ac;+;w98a42aaa;+; w7c0006ac;+;w38e00030;+;w98e40000;+;w42800000;
a0;g;"
;)
Regards,
Leo.
-
Seems simple enough to me. God knows I've sent a few PC's to PC heaven
by blowing away the bios in botched flash attempts. I actually had a
power failure right in the middle of a flash - the chances of that
happening was like getting struck by lightening.
It is good that there is this option. :)
-
That's so soon! :-o
It's a good thing that there aren't many boards out yet! :)
-
I personaly find it shocking that such an error go unnoticed through betatesting and alike but that said I think bplan did manage the situasion ok, not great but ok. :-o
-
Well, they wanted to get the boards out quick as.
Trouble with us Amiga people is we're greetin' faced bastards. If they'd held them back awhile to do more testing, you'd have all the arseholes on the red side bleeting about missed deadlines - it was already starting to happen.
It's testament to their skill and dedication that the boards went out at all - cut them some slack FFS!
Same thing goes the other way round when Hyperion don't get their beta out for Christmas - arseholes on the blue side bleeting.
-
Hey , how many PC users would have the patience or knowledge to repair this with the instructions...
It is great to know that the Amigans have the patience and the fortitude to work it out...
-
Simple solution is to wait a while before you buy any new hardware that way other people who buy them find any bugs and you get one later on that has any problems sorted. :-)
-
Hey , how many PC users would have the patience or knowledge to repair this with the instructions...
Actually any PC user who buys the first revision of a brand new motherboard typically deals with the exact same type of problem. You should expect to flash the bios multiple times in the first year, and there will definately be bugs.
If you don't like this then either wait for a later revision when all bugs are irond out, or buy a preassembled system from a dealer. Amiga or PC, buying separate components has it's risks.
-
Genesi has served the computer hobbyist since the first Beta release of the Pegasos in 2002. Trialed and tested by over 1000 users in 34 countries, enthusiasts have configured the Pegasos in variety of fashions with over a dozen different operating systems. The Pegasos was awarded the Amiga Award 2002 by Falke Media Verlag and recently, the Pegasos was acclaimed as the future home of the Linux desktop by German Linux site PPCNUX.
Over 1000 beta testers that have "trialled and tested" the board and they still cannot catch such a major flaw in the firmware before it goes out the door?
Either that statement is not worth the electrons showing it or they have some very shoddy testing and trialling criteria in my opinion.
-
IonDeluxe wrote:
Over 1000 beta testers that have "trialled and tested" the board and they still cannot catch such a major flaw in the firmware before it goes out the door?
1000 users haven't tested the Pegasos-2. They're about to do this now. Before this, the Peg-2 has been only in the hands of its engineers and core developers of MorphOS. The Peg-1 uses a different version of the firmware.
-
Over 1000 beta testers that have "trialled and tested" the board
WTF? First I've heard. I don't think they've even sold that many.
-
"Serves you right Pegasos owners!! bla... bla... bla... "
-
Actually any PC user who buys the first revision of a brand new motherboard typically deals with the exact same type of problem. You should expect to flash the bios multiple times in the first year, and there will definately be bugs.
Thats true i have had to flash all 3 pc motherboards i have had ,1 jetway 1 asus my current pc board and a crappy msi that went wrong .
so this is as said nothing to worry about even the amigaone will need a firmware flash to use os4 . :-)
-
Seems simple enough to me. God knows I've sent a few PC's to PC heaven
Luckily, my late model Gigabyte motherboards (e.g. GA-7N400 series) run with Dual-BIOS i.e. fitted with primary and backup BIOS.
-
I seen minor** PC BIOS bugs before but this one takes the cake…
**bootable state, with BIOS settings workarounds e.g. setting to low performance bias settings.
-
Hey , how many PC users would have the patience or knowledge to repair this with the instructions...
There are certain PC hackers that patches normal BIOS into “Uber’BIOS” (for extreme over clocking).
-
I seen minor** PC BIOS bugs before but this one takes the cake…
I've worked with lots os PC stuff over the years and trust me, they don't always work as advertised. I've seen some nasty stuff.
But don't get me wrong, this is an embarasment for any company. They do seem to have handled it sufficiently though.
-
I've worked with lots os PC stuff over the years and trust me,
What are you implying?
With X86 PC world, one could avoid certain brand and make if reliability is an issue.
they don't always work as advertised. I've seen some nasty stuff.
Does this “nasty stuff” have the ability to cause the system to stop from booting up?
-
As long as a fix is made available thats good.
Customer service is not judged by producing impeccable hardware/software but by how any customer problems are dealt with when things go wrong.
I was once instructed by a tech support person of a major motherbooard manufacturer to hot swap a bios chip. In other words I was told to boot the system by installing a bios chip from an identical board and start up the bios flashing program. I was then instructed to pull out the chip (whilst the power was on) and replace it with the original corrupted one to resume the flashing process.
I would have been tempted to try this experiment if it wasn't for the fact that this particular board was a top of the range expensive mainboard and my company could not afford to risk two dead bios chips instead of one.
-
I was once instructed by a tech support person of a major motherbooard manufacturer to hot swap a bios chip. In other words I was told to boot the system by installing a bios chip from an identical board and start up the bios flashing program. I was then instructed to pull out the chip (whilst the power was on) and replace it with the original corrupted one to resume the flashing process.
That is a well known way of doing it and should work as they advise. :-)
-
Like I said, I was tempted, Its not everyday you get a chance to do such things. but my supervisor at the time said no. (Spoilsport!) :-P
-
I was once instructed by a tech support person of a major motherbooard manufacturer to hot swap a bios chip. In other words I was told to boot the system by installing a bios chip from an identical board and start up the bios flashing program. I was then instructed to pull out the chip (whilst the power was on) and replace it with the original corrupted one to resume the flashing process.
That particular method was applied on some of the ruined Flash BIOS (e.g. flashing certain Uber’BIOS images) on certain nForce 2 motherboards. Gigabyte’s Dual-BIOS (socketed versions**) is very useful for that rescuing role. But some people likes to RMA their boards and get a 'free' upgrade to a newer motherboard revision e.g. A7N8X Rev 1.01 -> Rev 1.04/1.06 -> Rev 2.0.
Second method is via the use of certain NIC cards and modified/hacked NIC flashing software.
-
What are you implying?
Nothing.
With X86 PC world, one could avoid certain brand and make if reliability is an issue.
If one was educated enough to know each individual flaw of each revision of each motherboard of each brand :-D
Does this “nasty stuff” have the ability to cause the system to stop from booting up?
Not specifically that I have seen. My point is only that this is not an earth shattering defect. Most computer products are imperfect in one way or another whether the user can see it or not. The AmigaOne is a perfect example, it has required a bios update and is said to still have problems. Yet there are still users perfectly happy with it.
-
Either that statement is not worth the electrons showing it or they have some very shoddy testing and trialling criteria in my opinion.
You doubt you know anything about what you'r talking about so i wouldnt create such strong bold sentences. Arnt you seeing a paterns here, all software and hardware have bugs. This industry is relativly new, we're still learning how to perfect our processors of design and testing.
Software and i suppose hardware is compared to bridges quite a lot in the academic area. At least it was at my uni. The question, why do bridges no break down as much as software or hardware. Bridges have been built for years, and we know how to do it now. But you can compare it to software and hardware because the field is too dynamic but its still very young. We've been building bridges for hundreds and even thousands of years, yet software and hardware has only emerged in the last hundred years or less!!
Everyone acts so surprised when MS finds wholes and bugs in their software and the same goes for linux and hardware and AmigaOS, they think that all the testers in the world should be able to snuff these out. Not true.
A stable peice of software or hardware will still have bugs. Every peice of software today has bugs. You will not be able to find a peice of software or hardware without bugs. Bugs are everwhere, you'll never get rid of them, untill something fantastic and marvelous happens, like the invention of AI, but even that will be flawed because humans original wrote the first A1... I hope you liked my story. The moral is you'll never illiminate all bugs, some bugs will go by undectected. But that doesnt mean they arn't there!!!
-
@Hammer
>Does this "nasty stuff" have the ability to cause the system to stop from booting up?
From own hand experience: yes it does.
I had a mobo which refused to boot when a big harddrive was attached, until the latest bios version was updated to handle it.
Ok so in practise it's not a bug but lack of support for feature in bios.. but.. anyway.
-
I had a mobo which refused to boot when a big harddrive was attached, until the latest bios version was updated to handle it.
Doesn't it show a startup BIOS screen?
Those particular issues are inherited when dealing with old motherboards and a large hard disk. Such problem can be workaround by plugging in a lesser capacity hard disk or switching the limiter on the hard disk.
My old Pentium II motherboards** still boots up to the normal BIOS screen even IF it doesn’t support 40GB HDs…
**
1. Lucktech, Luckystar Intel 440ZX/BX based,
2. PCchips(now Chaintech) BXPro, BXcel, SIS 5595 SIS 600, 'etc'
-
@Hammer
Can't remember did it show up in BIOS or not. Maybe I didn't even check as it was so obvious the BIOS needed flashing. Anyway it is, it didn't boot ;-)
-
Can't remember did it show up in BIOS or not. Maybe I didn't even check as it was so obvious the BIOS needed flashing. Anyway it is, it didn't boot
Does it render the PC unbootable** in a semi-permanent state?
**I define bootable PC with operating BIOS start-up screen.
Example of non-semi-permanent unbootable PC is when a blown SM56 PCI card plugged in and causes the PC not to show a BIOS startup screen. The PC will return to normal operation when the offending device is disconnected.
Levels of severity;
0. Bootable to BIOS startup screen with issues e.g. unsupported hard disk capacity.
1. Non-semi-permanent unbootable state, e.g. a plugged offending device which cause the PC not to show BIOS startup screen. Usually, unplugging the offending device will return the PC into normal operation.
2. Semi-permanent unbootable state e.g. ruined PC BIOS flash. Can’t return to bootable state with typical methods.
3. Permanent unbootable state e.g. blown circuits on motherboard.
I have encountered plenty of level 0 ‘severity’, usually occurs with older motherboards when upgrading client’s PCs (on the cheap). Few with level 1 ‘severity’ and rare on level 2 ‘severity’.
-
If one was educated enough to know each individual flaw of each revision of each motherboard of each brand
Well, notice how most mainstream reviewers has stated that the 1st generation of the AMD K8 based motherboards is stable for normal use (not including over clocking activities).
-
Not specifically that I have seen. My point is only that this is not an earth shattering defect. Most computer products are imperfect in one way or another whether the user can see it or not.
Depends on the level of severity. Can one compare AmigaOne’s problems with the 1st generation AMD K8 motherboards**? Careful with generalisation since late revisions of X86 motherboards has less “bugs” than the said products mentioned.
**Not including yet another VIA (again!!!) centric Hyperion 4in1 ver50 data corruption issues.
-
@Hammer
The machine hung after device check when that harddrive was attached (so BIOS was accessible but a lockup occures if you didn't go to BIOS set-up).
The BIOS had to be updated by removing the harddrive, installing a floppydrive, booting from a disk and flashing the BIOS.
After this it was okay to attach the harddrive again and we got pass the device check.
I wouldn't call this bootable.
-
@Hooligan_DCS
Can you remember the type of motherboard? (Reason: So we can watch for it).
I wouldn't call this bootable.
At least the machine was at non-semi-permanent unbootable state (level 1 severity).
-
I once had a mobo with a f###ed up BIOS (can't think what else could do that),
that would boot just fine, if you would have managed to get the settings right.
Tried 3 different VGA-card (all were later prooven o.k. with the replacement-mobo),
and all showed rather weirds pictures in text-mode.
Wanna know how it looked ? Get you "classic" out, connect it to a TV or 15khz
monitor, select the A2024-driver and try to operate it ...
And yes it was that bad :-o
-
Hammer wrote:
With X86 PC world, one could avoid certain brand and make if reliability is an issue.
Provided of course that this brand doesn't include CPUs or commercial operating systems. Not much choice there.
-
Now I remember why I own an EEPROM programmer.
-
Provided of course that this brand doesn't include CPUs or commercial operating systems. Not much choice there.
Refer to the context i.e. only main board/motherboard scope.
As for CPU, one could avoid the early Intel Pentium III 1.13Ghz and Pentium Classic math flaws by selecting alternatives e.g. AMD.
commercial operating systems.
Of course, btw one should also include open source operating systems not just commercial ones.
-
I once had a mobo with a f###ed up BIOS (can't think what else could do that),
Is the problem a manufacture defect (variance) or design defect? Is issue duplicated to the rest of the manufactured motherboard batch?
-
You doubt you know anything about what you'r talking about so i wouldnt create such strong bold sentences. Arnt you seeing a paterns here, all software and hardware have bugs. This industry is relativly new, we're still learning how to perfect our processors of design and testing.
I dont doubt what I am talking about at all or I would not say it.
Nevertheless, a bios flaw like this is similar to a bridge being built without a carriagway, or a car being built without wheels or spark plugs.The car example is more applicable to your example as it uses about the same timeframe.
The only person making bold statements here is BBRV for expounding the virtues of the testing of pegasos boards yet a bug of this magnitude gets through.
Someone mad mention that this relates only to pegasos II boards. Well thats fine, but it changes nothing as BBRV did not specify or make destintions between the the two boards making his statements even more ludicrous.This of course brings me back to this:
Either that statement is not worth the electrons showing it or they have some very shoddy testing and trialling criteria in my opinion.
-
Iondeluxe: you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Probably intentionally.