So what does it take for us to flash our own boards?

[Rope a Dope]

With all this software goin' around... why can't we flash our own boards?!?!

Does it take an EPROM programmer to program the chip itself? Because I coulda swore on the video Tom mentions a connection for programming but it is "not released as of yet".

For shipping costs alone it's $40 to have the board flashed. I'm sure a data link cable to say a USB or age old SERIAL port would cost way less than $40.

Sorry, I have no idea how the boards are flashed on the E/X-Mag but it sounds like it's not that hard of a task, and I'm sure if someone does screw their up they can send it to AGD and have it fixed for a small fee. Letting us do it ourselves will save AGD time and money and us time and money, plus give us tweakers something to tweak with. I mean it's not like we ever have to FIX our mags... let us do SOMETHING!

[Rope a Dope]

Guess it's top secret... :(

[krafty]

It's not that you COULDN'T do it if you had the equipment... I think it's more of AGD not wanting every Tom, Dick and Rope a Dope having their software. It's the best way to assure there's no tampering and that if your Emag says 3.2 it really IS 3.2, not your own code (possibly containing cheater software of other things they don't want on their guns).

[RT pRo AuToMaG]

Originally posted by krafty
It's not that you COULDN'T do it if you had the equipment... I think it's more of AGD not wanting every Tom...


Tom can't flash his own boards? :eek: :D ;)




lol, sorry, I couldn't pass up the oppertunity

They probably don't give out the software/hardware the same reason that your car doesn't come with software/hardware to modify your ecu. Someone is gonna either mess up or make their gun a danger to others and go back and blame it on AGD.

[RoadDawg]

It's best to leave these things to people AGD authorizes to do it. It doesn't look complicated at all, but there is always gonna be someone to mess it up. So AGD is doing a great job at preventing that from happening. Go to an event or ship it. Those are the best ways to get the marker flashed. If something goes wrong then they can tech it right then and there.

[DiRTyBuNNy]

Originally posted by Rope a Dope
With all this software goin' around... why can't we flash our own boards?!?!

Does it take an EPROM programmer to program the chip itself? Because I coulda swore on the video Tom mentions a connection for programming but it is "not released as of yet".

For shipping costs alone it's $40 to have the board flashed. I'm sure a data link cable to say a USB or age old SERIAL port would cost way less than $40.

Sorry, I have no idea how the boards are flashed on the E/X-Mag but it sounds like it's not that hard of a task, and I'm sure if someone does screw their up they can send it to AGD and have it fixed for a small fee. Letting us do it ourselves will save AGD time and money and us time and money, plus give us tweakers something to tweak with. I mean it's not like we ever have to FIX our mags... let us do SOMETHING!

Well..considering the code is locked...what really is there to tweak? You want to try all the different versions of E/X-Mag code? be my guest...it's not that Programmer that's difficult to get...it's the proprietary patch cable that runs from the programmer to the board pin-out...i've been trying to get one of those for months just so that I can do updates at all the tournaments and events here on the west coast (that I already attend)..

[Rope a Dope]

What's so hard? You connect a cable from your E/X-Mag board to your PC, open the program and click "Upgrade firmware".

Edit---Dirty, I don't wanna tweak it, I want to upgrade my firmware. I sent my mag back to AGD once to get the 3.2 software, that cost me $40, now I gotta send it out AGAIN when 4.0 is released. That's $80 to do a simple rom flash. That cable costs a lot less to make than $80.... I've made non-standard cables all the time when i worked at Intel and did micro soldering on beta chip sets for mothersboards.

I flash the firmware on my PC's motherboard all the time, also on my router. As far as cars, I actually flash the ROM for my cars computer as well, before people replaced the "chips" to get higher performance out of their cars, now they buy hand held programmers that plug into the cars diagnostic port and it flashes it so you change gears sooner, calibrate your speedometer for different sized tires etc.. also disable the speed governor, but we won't talk about that, hehehe

AGD could do the same thing. Plus they supply the firmware to flash the boards with so you know it's good. If you want to cheat... you'll have to hack the program. But if you can do that you might as well get a EPROM programmer and flash it/hack it yourself without the help of AGD's "Simple to use USB data link cable".

Theres always a way to cheat.. if someone really wanted to they could do it. I mean people already do it on WAS boards by programming it to ramp the dwell the faster they shoot, among other things. Come on... it's the year 2004, people have computers. Sending something all the way to IL when I can do it on my own PC is silly.

The rules in paintball need to change if illegal software is a problem at major events. Why not have a computer that does a checksum on the software on any givin gun? If it doesn't match bit for bit with the "legal" software.. the gun is deemed illegal for the tournament. They really need to get into this century.. make the ports easy to access with a little flip dust cover, you chrono your gun, plug in a cable, click which gun you have and it does a checksum on your guns software and a big green light turns on with a "beep". and you move on. Make that port standard as well so each gun doesn't have a different port. Hell... make it a tiny 4 pin USB port like digital cameras have, that way the cables will be cheap and you can plug it into any computer with a USB port.

I've worked at IBM, Intel and Apple computer... the electronics in paintball guns are as simple as it gets. Any programmer worth anything could come up with a way to stop cheating with electronics very easily.

I know... great ideas, cold day in hell it's gonna happen while I'm alive, lol. I can dream can't I?

[Wes Janson]

Industry standards...now *THERE'S* a contradiction in terms. :P

[purplemag]

Look at the angels that can use a Palm pilot infrared to send settings to the gun. I'm not saying make it for the palm pilot, but being able to have the cable would be nice. Have a program that only allows the user to change certain stuff...custom messages, what modes should be on the firmware, and then download the info to the gun. I don't think that is outlandish?

[cphilip]

I once connected my electric blanket controler to my emag and that thing was HOT!!!!! ;)

[athomas]

The serial connection is quite easy to make. If someone was good enough at programming to hack the code they could easily make their own cheater program and download it to the AVR in the emag anyway. I don't think we have anything to worry about giving people the Hex code and an easy to use flash program. It would be nice to get the legit code in Hex format and flash our own boards whenever there is an update.

edit: Oops, had a couple of major grammar errors.

[Branchvillian]

I want to be able to get custom user text on the screen where it ussually ssys AGD 3.2

[Cryer]

so aside from shipping, how much does it cost to flash a board?

[GT]

Originally posted by Cryer
so aside from shipping, how much does it cost to flash a board?

Free,
wait till tx ball I think havoc is getting a programmer..

[Cryer]

thats what I thought, but he said "shipping alone is $40"... Kinda seemed like there was somethin on top of that.

I might try and stop in @ PBMaxx when I get my mag... That way, I can have enough time to make sure that their aren't going to be issues w/ the solenoid/etc...

[lamby]

The data cable is easy to make, but the crimper for the 1.25mm terminals is bucu bucks ($180) You can get a free programmer for the AVRs that runs in windows (GCC) that runs on the serial (9pin) com ports. The AVRs can be programmed in circuit, but require power to be induced as the the programmer will not supply it. I am currently tring to get a 3rd burst jumper to sacrifice to the solder gods so I can make a AVR dongle that has the correct 5pin 1.25mm plug for the marker.

This is all good, but without the hex code or source code this is useless as you can not extract data from the AVR (I was told that there is a way to unlock the code by running a "hack" program on the AVR, but I have not tried that yet. I was told this by a old Satellite hacker so I think it might be possible) if you can extract the locked data, then it is all fair in love and war what you can do to the code (as long as it is not protected by copyrights). I think AGD needs to allow this source code to be released on thier website and allow us to modify the code and republish it. LONG LIVE THE GNU MOVEMENT!!!!!!!!

[slushee]

Originally posted by lamby
LONG LIVE THE GNU MOVEMENT!!!!!!!!

yeah .. look what it did with linux :rolleyes:

sorry, had to poke fun there .. couldn't resist ...

[Tunaman]

There is NO proprietory cable. The cable must be hand made. Letting people mess with the source code will NEVER happen. If you mess up you will have a blank chip and will be crying to AGD to fix it anyway. Writing or messing with the source code is no easy task. Countless hours have been spent on perfecting this software. There is just about no more room for improvements on this particular chip. It is just too small. Please let an AGD certified Specialized Tech do this for you. It is the only way to make sure it is done right.;)

[Rope a Dope]

Uh, sorry there Tuna, sport... but my experience at IBM working in level 1 clean rooms replacing cylinders in hard drives after some high up executive dumps coffee into his ThinkPad and fry's the drive, micro soldering and WHQL lab testing new products at Intel and doing failure analysis engineer work at Apple computer (along with network support) makes me WAY more qualified to work on anything electronic than you will ever be. I've been through the rise and fall of silicon valley, you haven't.

I never said I want to "hax0r the source code", I want a freaking $5 cable and a CD rom with a program that flashes my E-Mag boards firmware which AGD could sell for $50 a pop and I can download the latest firmware from airgun.com as they release it. That is all. And when people do screw with the code which they were warned not to do and they end up with a dead board then AGD can smile and sell them a new one for $200 http://store.airgun.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=17&Product_ID=180&CATID=6 .

[Joni]

If it is possible to flash just using a cable and a pc, it should not be a problem. Relase the source code encrypted, and let the flashing software download the key with ssl at the time of flashing, never showing the code to the user.

That way no one is going the be able to mess with the code (as if anyone would put the effort in to read hex code), and people wont have to ship their precious mags.

[TheTramp]

At the very least get some sort of AGD presence in New England. God forbid I could take my E-Mag somewhere to be flashed.

[lamby]

its a paintball gun for christ's sake. this code is not that important. There is no international protection that is required. It is simple code that is only 2k in size that runs one of the simplest microprocessors in the world. And smoking the code will not kill the board, maybe a fet or the AT90S, but that is about it.

why is it that other suppliers allow code to uploaded into markers and AGD wont?

Is AGD worried that it will give them a bad name if there are "cheater boards"? Too late AGD already has a bad name in the eyes of most tourney players that I know.

Is AGD afraid that people will smoke thier guns? if the software hex file is out in the public domain and someone writes code to the atmel that is bad (wont run) just reflash it to the "approved software" (the reason I have yet to play with the code on my emag. I will have to get a prototyping board or another emag board.)

Is AGD affraid that someone will write better code then them and have people sell it? DING DING DING I think we have a winner!!!! I can not see any other reason than this.

release the betas, take no responsibility for it, people will use it and report bugs to you, you fix them and re-release another beta.. It works for the PC crowd.

I think that I need to find someone with a molex crimper and start making AGD programmers and write some code. And I mean ALL kinds of code. FULL auto 22bps sounds good to me. Tourney legal code at max bps and buffering sounds good to me. Ramping dwell code (shootup) sounds good to me. These little codes are easy to write in basic (not as fast as c or assy, but I can't program those) compile to a hex file and then program with gcc. If/When I do this (find a crimper) I will let you as a community know.

I want to take nothing away from MISCUE, his software sounds great. It sounds like he did a great job with as little as he had to work with (a measly AT90S2313, that does not even have an alpha numeric subset)

Miscue, I give you mad props!!! I think AGD is again dropping the ball with the damn fuse bytes! set the byte data to 1 1 and end this talk. Let the people who can do, those that dont wont be able to extract the code so it is not an issue (untill I make the programmers) then watch out. flash your code for whatever you want your marker to do, that is my objective now.