hi NarShadda!
thanks for the info! i'll try to answer some of your questions.
> When I ran dakotaconfig -s, I noticed that the picture count was set to 68 which I thought was odd.
the static area is used as a template to regenerate the dyn area in case the dyn area gets corrupted, and who knows for what else. however some fields are hardcoded in the firmware and overwritten during regeneration. one such field is the photo limit, so the -s number is meaningless (or means something else).
> Then I ran dakotaconfig -d and got an error.
> I am curious as to why the older firmware doesn't show the dynamic config data. Any ideas?
yeap, it seems your older version of the firmware maintains a simpler configuration. your firmware has a config signature of 0100: AA while mine has 0100: AA 55. mine seems to have some code to understand older configs, but i haven't deeped into it. i'm just becoming aware of these diferences by postings like yours and i will update the tools as soon as i can make something out of these few reports. meanwhile you can just comment the signature check.
> Oddly enough, dakotaconfig -limit 99 worked fine.
it should, as there's a camera command for setting the limit. it's just that some of these tools are overly picky. i rather have them fail than act unexpectedly, and i've only tried them on my single camera before posting them.
> I get a message [...] has caused an error and needs to be closed
sorry, my fault!! some problem with STL library strings. it's the first time i use them (i hadn't program in c/c++ for many years). something gets freed before it has to. i'll look into it.
> I figured I would try upgrading the firmware on the older camera to see if it would work. The firmware upgrade ran fine, but when I tried to turn on the camera, it displayed a blinking "Er" on the LCD. [...] Anyway, I flashed the original firmware back to the older camera and it is functioning perfectly again.
hahaha!!! that was very brave of you! glad to hear your camera survived :)
> Is the serial number perhaps encoded in the firmware to prevent copying from one camera to another?
no, the serial is in the dyn config area, and it can be updated using request 0x58 index 0. besides, that would show in the md5 hashes...
> Any ideas on why the firmware upgrade might not have worked?
yes, with the little info i have till now it seems cameras with these two firmware versions have:
-the same static config data
-slightly different sunplus config data
-different dynamic config data
the most worrying differences are in the dyn config, but the dyn config will be regenerated if corrupted (at least that's what i understood by looking at the firmware). the sunplus area has mostly chipset configuration, but nothing that would cause the 8051 core to hang and not be able to reverse the firmware change if some problem should arise i guess.
i'd say the new firmware didn't like the old environment and refuses to run. static config data can be updated using request 0x10 index 1, and sunplus config data using request 0x10 index 2. trouble is, how much of this data is firmware dependant, and how much depends on, say, the sunplus chip version? on top of this, i don't have an old camera to investigate.
> If you would like to look at the older firmware, I could let you see it.
that'd be handy... but wouldn't it be illegal??? ;)
i'll be posting the info i get in my page, but i got a lot to post and little time.
thanks a lot NarShadda, see ya!
