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?




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]

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

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...