Problem with Extender3 on 8811

JCTerrier · Post by **JCTerrier** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 2:24 pm

Hi,

I have been progressing slowly in my use of JP1 and recently tackled the issue of extenders to gain more room on my 8811s. My first attempt was successful, but now for the second one I am having problem obtaining a working remote as a result.

I have posted an archive in the Diagnosis Section of the JP1 file area and would appreciate it if someone could take a look at what could be the source of the problem.

Please download the file here

Thanks very much in advance

JCTerrier

Mark Pierson · Post by **Mark Pierson** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 2:44 pm

There have been reports of Ext3 being unstable on some 881x's. Someone discovered adding an extra NOP to the source code seemed to cure it, but I don't think the available code was ever updated.

Nils_Ekberg · Post by **Nils_Ekberg** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 3:52 pm

Version 3 of the 6012 3_1 extender currently has zero NOP's after the STOP. Version 2.4 had two NOP's. Adding two NOP's after the STOP in 3_1 seemed to solve the problem. There was some argument aways back that 3 was better but I confirmed that 2 is sufficient.

So, if you edit the .asm file and add the two NOP's after the STOP command, reassemble it, and reinstall it you should be OK

John, I think this was one of your extenders, if you don't have time I will update the package for you just let me know.

JCTerrier · Post by **JCTerrier** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 5:14 pm

Nils_Ekberg wrote: So, if you edit the .asm file and add the two NOP's after the STOP command, reassemble it, and reinstall it you should be OK

Nils,

I sure hope you were not talking to me here!
And if you were, lets just say I will need more details.
As in "step by step instructions".

Thanks for anything you can do.

JCTerrier

johnsfine · Post by **johnsfine** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 6:05 pm

Nils_Ekberg wrote: John, I think this was one of your extenders, if you don't have time I will update the package for you just let me know.

I guess that's a good idea. This seems to be one of my jinxed projects. Every time I start that should_be_trivial task I get bogged down in details of multiple versions of big eeprom and release issues and unclear documentation and end up delivering nothing.

Nils_Ekberg · Post by **Nils_Ekberg** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 6:08 pm

I could probably walk you through it if you want to first download and review John's assembler and see if you are comfortable with it.

Question? How did you install the extender? If you just copied the .txt file into IR and built your upgrade on top of that I may be able to create you a new txt file pretty quick. If John is not in a position to the extender with the fix I will.

JCTerrier · Post by **JCTerrier** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 7:52 pm

Nils_Ekberg wrote:I could probably walk you through it if you want to first download and review John's assembler and see if you are comfortable with it.

I didn't find anything resembling that in the JP1 files section. Where should I look?

Nils_Ekberg wrote:Question? How did you install the extender? If you just copied the .txt file into IR and built your upgrade on top of that I may be able to create you a new txt file pretty quick. If John is not in a position to the extender with the fix I will.

I followed the instructions in the Install.txt. First with my working remote and then on the same remote returned to its original configuration. If needed, I can send more files. Just ask !

Now that I am here with problems in Ext3, what should I do? If I were to switch to extender2, would I need to go back to a virgin configuration and rebuild on it; or can I somehow install extender 2 over what is there now? Could I, this time, preserve the upgrades and other data?

Please let me know and thanks for your patience.

JCT

Nils_Ekberg · Post by **Nils_Ekberg** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 7:46 am

I have uploaded version 3_2 of the 6012 (6012/8011/8811 ) extender. This has the fix for the intermittent problem with the 881x remotes for the both the 2K and 8K EEPROM.

John, I did not touch the docs since they look fundamentally correct and no one has complained.

JCTerrier, you can install this from your original image just like you did the first time. Make sure you replace the extender RDF's with the ones in the zip file

Extender 6012ex3_2

JCTerrier · Post by **JCTerrier** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 2:08 pm

Nils,

That did it. First I did a reset on my remote, installed the new extender and reinstalled the devices and it worked. The remote appears to be stable.

There is something that I found *really* strange though. Previously, for each device, RM would display data in the "Upgrade Protocol Code" pane along with a prominent message (All caps, red type) telling how important it was to copy this into IR.

With the new version, no such data, no such message!!!

Now, if I wanted to redo my other remote, should I apply the new extender to the remote as it is now (old extender 3, upgrades and upgrade protocols) or do I have to do a reset first, apply the new extender and reload everything?

Nils_Ekberg · Post by **Nils_Ekberg** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 2:51 pm

JCTerrier wrote:Nils,

That did it. First I did a reset on my remote, installed the new extender and reinstalled the devices and it worked. The remote appears to be stable.?

Great, love it when a plan comes together

JCTerrier wrote:There is something that I found *really* strange though. Previously, for each device, RM would display data in the "Upgrade Protocol Code" pane along with a prominent message (All caps, red type) telling how important it was to copy this into IR.

With the new version, no such data, no such message!!!?

The reason I believe that happened is because you were using the RDF's from the old extender zip file instead of the latest v1.17 distribution of RDF's. RM uses information from the RDF to determine availability of protocols (and many other things) in the remote and the old version did not have that so RM assumed the remote did not have the protocol and created it for you. The new RDF's in the extender zip file have the protocol information so there was no flag raised by RM that the protocol was missing.

JCTerrier wrote:Now, if I wanted to redo my other remote, should I apply the new extender to the remote as it is now (old extender 3, upgrades and upgrade protocols) or do I have to do a reset first, apply the new extender and reload everything?

You could probably just apply the new extender but the best bet is to reset the remote just so it is clean.

JCTerrier · Post by **JCTerrier** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 8:15 pm

Thanks Nils for everything.

JCT