Firmware 1r484 broken wireless?

[ceejay]

OK, so I'm not having much luck here. Having had a lot of issues with the firmware (wouldn't set wireless region, bad MAC address, kept freezing) that came installed I thought I'd try an update. So I did the firmware update from the server and it seems to have worked: I now have different firmware (1r484 apparently) which certainly fixes the problem with selecting wireless region.

Unfortunately it seems to have broken the one wireless connection that I had working (out of two possible). The MAC address is still the "wrong" one that I had before but I've set MAC filtering to allow both.

To make it even more annoying I keep having to re-enter my SSID as after a couple of tries it seems to forget the setting so I have to start again.

Anyone else got this rev working?

If the answer is going to be to try a new firmware rev I guess I'm going to have to do it via the SD card...

Help appreciated.

Ceejay

[rtitmuss]

Can you post some more detail about your network. Do you have broadcast ssid disabled, this used to work last time I check but there is an open bug for it now?

[rtitmuss]

So it looks like connecting to hidden SSIDs was broken. I have just fixed this (revision 497) and it should be in the next Jive nightly firmware. I suggest you enable SSID broadcasts to get connected and upgrade.

Cheers,
Richard

[ceejay]

Thanks Richard. Turning SSID broadcast on didn't fix it. At one point in testing I had two different WAPs on channels 1 and 6, both broadcasting SSID, no MAC filtering, no security, and this device wouldn't find either of them, even if I gave it the SSID names.

[Yes I have turned some of the security back on now!!]

I guess I'll have to try an SD card transfer, might take a few days before I can do that...

Ceejay

[ceejay]

Well this has been a good game.... so I found an old 32MB SD card, downloaded jive.bin, loaded it up: found the option to update the firmware from SD card, started ... then failed.

Decided something didn't like such an old, small card so found a new 512MB card. Loaded the same jive.bin onto it. Again found the option to update, this time the firmware update went ok. Hurray!

Let the thing restart, specified my network name (the SSID is not broadcast), it connected! Double hurray! I found my slimserver - ah, no player, so I started a Softsqueeze connected to this server (its not my "production" server, you understand).

Now the jive box is most insistent that I do another software upgrade, presumeably over the wireless from the server (very recently upgraded to SlimServer Version: 7.0 - 13131 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252). Again the update seems to go ok, again I connect to the network.

But....... I now seem to have a useless remote. It will only make its way to a blank screen apart from the softsqueeze name (IP address) shown at the top. All buttons and the scroll wheel are ignored, except for "bumps" on "left" or the centre button. I can turn it off by holding "home", but when I turn it on again I get taken straight back to the same useless screen. I can't even confirm which firmware this is as I can't get to the screen which would tell me.

Hmmm, now what? OK, cunning plan: edit the allowed MAC address list so that the handset won't be allowed to connect to the network and so won't be able to get back to that useless screen. This cunning plan works: I restart and can see that the firmware is back to 1r484, where I started.

Soooo - put the SD card back in, redo the update from there. Now at 1r512. Re-enable the MAC filtering, restart, connect to network again. Lovely... but I get taken straight to the "Software Update" screen again. Can I find a way out? "Home"!

At last I seem to have a functioning remote and might actually get to try something. But its late now and I've had enough, maybe tomorrow.

Just time to write this cautionary tale for anyone following behind - if you get asked to do a firmware upgrade, make sure you mean it to or you might be taken back to something that doesn't work!

What I don't understand is how disabling the network connection managed to get me out of this trap - as my problem with 1r484 was that it wouldn't connect to my network????? I can only assume that having got connected by the short-lived first installation of 1r512, the connection was retained, but imperfectly, when I inadvertently reverted to 1r484. And the box then got very confused, thinking it should be controlling the softsqueeze but unable to talk to the slimserver, and taking away ALL of the menu items from the home page, even the Remote Settings which might have enabled me to do something useful.

Or was it simply the act of powering down (so I could insert the SD card) that broke the connection, and changing the MAC filtering was just a red herring?

Like I said, good game, this beta testing...

Ceejay