41CL News

[Sylvain Cote]

To fellow 41CL users ...

Just in case you have not noticed, Monte has released some days ago several CL ROM updates.

This post will only cover the 41CL Update Functions, I will cover the other updates in another post later this week.

41CL Update Functions (Name: YUPS, Version: 4A, Released: 2018-12-28, YCRC: 0x5189B8F2)

Warning: unless you manually download & activate the new update ROM (YUPS), this will only be available after you have completed your next update of your 41CL.

The new YUPS ROM has a new tweak that speed up dramatically the outdated ROM scanning, were talking minutes instead of hours here.
Monte has added a new flag called Enable Compare-only Mode that can be activated with the CPONLY instruction. (flag is reset at each power on)
When the compare only mode is activated, the FLCHK?/FDBCHK? functions instead of calculating each ROM CRC, will compare the contents of the FLDB agains the content of the CFLDB to determine which pages are out-of-date.
The result is simply amazing, V5 1024 ROMs scan time: 01m 16s with CPONLY set and 02h 51m 18s with CPONLY cleared.
I have successfully updated my six 41CL without any issues. (1x V2, 1x V3, 2x V4 & 2x V5)

Here is the most simple use case:

Code:

UPDATE 3B   UPDATE 4A   description
----------  ----------  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PC-side ->              java -jar clupdate-1.1.0.jar --update rom_files_181228.zip /dev/tty.usbserial 4800
PC-side ->              wait until "Waiting    for 41CL commands ..." is shown then do next step
CMOPEN      CMOPEN      open communication
            CPONLY      activate Compare-only Mode
"*"         "*"         scan entire flash space
FLCHK?      FLCHK?      download FLDB file, scan for outdated ROMs and upload new CFLDB file
FLUPD       FLUPD       update outdated ROM's in flash
CMCLOSE     CMCLOSE     close communication

For the most courageous manually loading the new UPDAT-4A.ROM image

Code:

steps               description
------------------  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PC-side ->          extract the UPDAT-4A.ROM file from the rom_files_181228.zip file
MMUDIS              disable MMU
MMUCLR              clear MMU (optional, if you know your current MMU configuration)
"YFNX"              41CL Extreme Functions ROM
PLUG1L              map it to page 8 (or choose your prefered page)
SERINI              initialize serial port
BAUD48              set speed to 4800 baud (YFNX BAUD function is currently buggy and cannot be used)
MMUEN               activate MMU

Code:

"80F000-0FFF"       UPDAT-4A.ROM will be loaded into RAM physical address 80F
[XEQ][ALPHA]YIMP    do not complete the function name input yet
PC-side ->          java -jar clupdate-1.1.0.jar --upload UPDAT-4A.ROM /dev/tty.usbserial 4800
PC-side ->          wait until "5 seconds before starting file transfer" is shown then do next step
[ALPHA]             activate YIMP
"80F"               RAM physical address to validate
YCRC                validate ROM image, if you see 5189B8F2 displayed, then the ROM is valid
"-80F 9"            map 4K-word at physical address 80F to page 9 (or choose your prefered page)
PPLUG               activate mapping
CAT 2               should show "UPDAT 4A"

Many thanks goes to Monte Dalrymple for having added, in a transparent way, this new optimization into the 41CL Update ROM.
Other thanks goes to Robert Prosperi for having beta tested the ROM.

Have fun!

Sylvain

[CY-CL]

Hello Sylvain

Many thanks for the update and your big effort to help us with any CL matter.

Patrik

[aurelio]

really good news, thank you Sylvain, thank you Monte.

[CY-CL]

Perfect Job, thanks Sylvain, thanks Monte

It runs now with WARP Speed. I testet it:

01. MEMORY LOST
02. MMUCLR
03. “YUPS”
04. PLUG1U
05. “YFNX”
06. PLUG1L
07. MMUEN
08. SERINI
09. BAUD 48
10. TURBO 50

PC Side in CMD: java –jar clupdate-1.1.0.jar --update rom_files_180706.zip COM4 4800

Waiting for 41CL commands…

11. CMOPEN
12. CPONLY
13. “*”
14. FLCHK?

15. FLUPD : UPDATE DONE
16. CMCLOSE

[Monte Dalrymple]

I should point out that Compare-Only mode has the potential to cause problems in some corner cases. For example, since the FLDB is stored at 0x0DE in Flash, if an update is aborted after the FLDB has been written but before the entire Flash has been updated, the non-updated Flash pages will be stale relative to the FLDB contents. If you use CPONLY during the next update, those stale pages will not be updated. There is a simple way around this, which is to always make sure that an update completes, even if you have to restart it after it has been aborted. An update can be aborted from the keyboard, because of a timeout during a serial transfer (which happens all the time to me as my PC ignores the keep-alive bytes and goes to sleep aggressively), or because the battery level has fallen too low. Even though an update has been aborted, the CFLDB in RAM is still valid, so the update can be restarted even if you have to change batteries. I have done this several times. The RAM has always retained its contents during the battery switch-over, but I am always careful to do it as quickly as possible.