What is with updates every second day?

[yeshu26]

Hi

For my curiosity, and this is not a critical statement. The images are updated almost every second or third day. My image was 035 not long back, and how are reaching number 60+?

Why release the images if something needs to be a changed in a day, two or a week?

What is the effect on the EPROM of flashing with new firmwares. Can it reduce its life?

Thanks

[abu baniaz]

There are always updates/improvements being made. Actually on build 90 now.

You don't have to update.

[Rob van der Does]

What is the effect on the EPROM of flashing with new firmwares. Can it reduce its life?
No. All my boxes have been flashed hundreds of times.

Do you have the same worries when using an USB-stick?

[Larry-G]

Hi

For my curiosity, and this is not a critical statement. The images are updated almost every second or third day. My image was 035 not long back, and how are reaching number 60+?

Why release the images if something needs to be a changed in a day, two or a week?

What is the effect on the EPROM of flashing with new firmwares. Can it reduce its life?

Thanks


The image in in constant flux, with updates and enhancements added to the GIT every few hrs. Now we could go down the route of alpha testing patches and fixes, then beta testing those patches and fixes then and starting the whole process over again as soon as another line of code is added to the image, then in say 6 or 7 months release a image which is what we used to do, or we could update as we currently do where we release minor fixes and patches more frequently. either way we do it we will get flack from certain users so we cant really win no matter what we do to be honest.

[Rob van der Does]

Anyway: it's up to users if they want to update or not. If you're happy with your box, and not suffering from bugs that have been fixed in later builds, please leave the box as it is. Many do.

If on the other hand, you want to enjoy all the latest stuff that has bene brought in the image, you should update quite frequently.

[yeshu26]

So far so good, so I aint gonna update. Aint broken aint fix!

BTW for flashing are you guys not designing a way via serial port? I am sure the port is built by manufacturer for a good reason.

[nsw9154]

Well said pheonix 2 weeks I was running openvixHD Apollo 080 and now I am on openvixHD Apollo 090, but in that short space of time their have been fixes to the Timeshift timebar that I asked rossie to look in to and within a week it was incorporated into the next version of openvixHD now that is service and a Big Thank You to rossie for listening to my suggestion and incorporating it into the image,this is just 1 instance of the ever evolving and improving vix image because the Vix Team that have developed it and work on it (to many people to mention) really listen to what people want in a image and they try their hardest to do it,
OK sometimes they have to make a backwards step because it did not work mainly due to driver issues of individual receivers the Gigablue Quad being one such receiver that has realy given them more Headaches than any other to my knowledge, but they work their damn hardest to rectify and fix it's faults so that you the end user can Enjoy it, and have you ever taken the time to see how many Different Receivers that are now able to use the vix image :eek: yes that many so the next time that you are enjoying watching your favorite TV show through your E2 receiver running vix and something dose not work as you Expect it to just take a second to think off the many people that will probably spend Hours and Hours trying to fix that problem so that you can just watch your TV :D

[Larry-G]

So far so good, so I aint gonna update. Aint broken aint fix!

BTW for flashing are you guys not designing a way via serial port? I am sure the port is built by manufacturer for a good reason.

It is not possible to flash most of these receivers by the RS232 port, and if it were the manufacturers would have to provide the appropriate software to do it in the first place, it's not something we can just decide to do on our own. As I said in earlier the RS232 port is there primarily for debugging other than that it's pretty much useless.

[adm]

BTW for flashing are you guys not designing a way via serial port? I am sure the port is built by manufacturer for a good reason.

The RS232 serial port is used for debugging information. For instance, a debug boot-up log file as your machine switches on is output on this port.

Most PCs no longer support a RS232 connection, although there are USB to RS232 adapters.

The RS232 is 115200 baud and, depending your box, the image would take 1 to 2+ hours to transfer - which is rather a long time for things to go wrong.

[adm]

Do you have the same worries when using an USB-stick?

A flash memory as used to store an image can be corrupted in a way that may brick your box. An image, or other data, on a USB stick can be easily be replaced using a PC etc.

Reading a flash memory is relatively fast and when used in this mode it is usually read only (write protected) and is perfectly safe. When writing to flash the process can be very slow (100s of microseconds to write one word) and, depending on the type of memory used, the write protect for a whole block has to be removed before a single byte can be written. In some cases a block of flash has to be fully erased before a single byte can be overwritten - in worst case conditions this may take may 10s of seconds. If the power is removed during the write process or a bit of badly written, and untested, OpenVix code interferes with this process the memory can become corrupt. This is the reason that for all under TV boxes that can be updated there is always a warning about not removing power while the update is in progress

The risk of corrupting a flash memory may be very low but I personally do treat it's use very differently to that of a USB stick. I don't store any data that has to be written on a regular basis to flash memory, such as EPG data. I reserve flash for data that is stored on an irregular basis (but can be read thousands of times).

Modern flash memory should be good for 100,000s of write cycles but the risk is as above - corruption when writing.

[Larry-G]

If you are worried then just pick a image flash it and leave it at that, but like rob I have flashed all of my receivers (the ones in my sig bar below including the ones in red) several thousand times each and never had a issue with any of them which could not be fixed with a reflash.

[Rob van der Does]

Updating an image online only writes a limited amount of data to flash.
Flash has a controller (just as all flash-devices) that takes account for bad blocks.

When an image is being flashed, all flash is cleared first. If anything would go wrong, like a power outage), there is no problem at all: just reflash.

The only serious problem would be when flashing the bootloader fails due to a power cut. Then your box is most porbably bricked.
But chances are low, as the actual bootloader flash process takes only 3 or 4 seconds.

Writing to flash is indeed slow compared to reading, but who cares?

[bdbdbd]

Personally I like frequent smaller updates. I like to keep pretty much up to date and it's possible to read the info about what has changed if you're only going up a couple of updates at a time.

In any case with frequent updates you have the choice of updating or not. I think the current strategy is perfect.

Thanks for the never ceasing work. It's much appreciated.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Rob van der Does]

In any case with frequent updates you have the choice of updating or not.
That is exactly the idea; your choice to be 'on the bleeding edge of developments' or to be happy with what you've got.