PBO Firmware after P05 has choppy networking

[Scotian]

Hi,

I have two PBO media players and one is running the P61 beta firmware that was pulled from the site and the other is running P05. Boot have bootcodes >18 and in the case of the one with the P61 beta firmware (this is my older unit, purchased 2010) it works just great with no issues at all. My newest PBO, purchase in February, cannot run any firmware over P05 without experiencing choppy networking, i.e., streaming a video has lots of stops and starts to it. But with the P05 firmware, each video is perfect, no issues. The downside is I cannot take advantage of the new features added since P05. I have tried EVERY firmware released since P05 on this player and all suffer the same problem.

If someone has a suggestion, I welcome it, otherwise I post this just as a heads up to the PBO development team.

[scboley]

What are the bootcodes of each of the boxes? Do you have a serial cable to make the newer one have the matching bootcode of the older one? Plus you could do the erase command with a serial connection to totally wipe the problem one.

[Scotian]

Hi Steve,

So...I could downgrade (if that is the actual case) my newer bootcode PBO to match the older one? I do have a serial cable around somewhere but I have no idea how to do this. Is there a forum post about this?

This also leads me to antoher question. I assumed that the bootcode version was related to a "sub-"firmware, if that makes any sense, of the PBO hardware and was therefore not changeable. But it seems that it would be based on what you are saying... Does this also imply that there are known bootcode issues for which some codes are better than others?

I will look up the bootcodes and post them back later today or tomorrow for you.

[aasoror]

So...I could downgrade (if that is the actual case) my newer bootcode PBO to match the older one? I do have a serial cable around somewhere but I have no idea how to do this. Is there a forum post about this?

Yes you could, check the "unbick for $5" link in my sig below, that said I have to recommend against doing this.


I assumed that the bootcode version was related to a "sub-"firmware, if that makes any sense, of the PBO hardware and was therefore not changeable.
Thats sort of true, some newer firmwares will not work with the earlier bootcodes (namely BC16 and squashfs based firmwares), also some recent hardware is not compatible with earlier bootcodes (some bootcodes are meant to increase compatibility with new hardware components used in newer boxes like memory or sata controller, if you are to use older bootcode with newer hardware you might end up bricking your box).


Does this also imply that there are known bootcode issues for which some codes are better than others?
Yes, but it has been always "the later the better".


bc 18 and later support both squashfs and yaffs2 file systems while bc 16 only support yaffs2
bc 20 has a wider compatibility with hdd's > 500gb
bc 27 has a faster bootup time and change the box behavior as a usb storage when connected to a pc.


There is reported networking issue on any firmware past P53, but its related to copy speeds and not streaming and is bootcode irrelevant.