Cowon D2- Whoops! Bricked it!
Tech May 10th. 2007, 11:56pmLast week I tried to upgrade the firmware of my Cowon D2. I ran into a problem when trying to unmount the volume in Linux. To upgrade the firmware, you have to install a series of files in a particular sequence. You install, then unmount the volume, which then writes the last bit of the file to the volume. When the player turns on, it then writes this file to the firmware, upgrading the player. Then you do this two more times to complete the upgrade.
My D2 had been connected on a USB 1.0 instead of a USB 2.0 port, so it was taking an extremely long time to write the information to the disk when I wanted to unmount the player. It was “timing out” and not properly writing the files. This is a big “no no” when it comes to firmware. If things are written correctly, you can “brick” your machine….which I did rendering it useless.
It wouldn’t turn on, wouldn’t reset. Nothing. I arranged to take the player back to the brick-and-mortar store (pun intended) so they could send it off for repairs. I told them the firmware upgrade had failed, and they told me I could get it fixed free of charge! Awesome! They said the average time to wait was around 7-10 days which is pretty reasonable since it wasn’t costing me anything. We’ve had longer waits trying to get our rice cooker fixed at the same store.
Their guess about the repair time turn around was correct. I got my player back yesterday. The new firmware 1.45 beta works as advertised now that someone installed it for me correctly. I’ve figured out that the USB plug I was using wasn’t plugged in where I wanted it to be, so now my end is set up correctly too. Hopefully I won’t ever have to do any of this again.
The new firmware adds the ability to use the touch screen to draw basic pictures. It’s kind of silly, but cool to see them continuing to expand the feature set of the player. The Korean-English dictionary with study tools (for free!) and video playback (why I originally bought it) make the D2 a constant companion when I leave the house. The DMB features seem to be working a lot better now, and I spent today watch Korean television broadcasting on the go. Anything else they add in each firmware upgrade is just bonus cool.
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April 17th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
[...] center tomorrow, and hopefully I can get it back quickly. The last time I had to return the machine,I had accidentally bricked it when I had upgraded the firmware. This time it is absolutely not my fault. I wonder if they can fix [...]