DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

This is where announcements of official firmware updates provided by SwissMicros for the DM42 calculator will be made.

Please do not post bug reports here. The Usage tips, tricks and problem reports forum is there for that.

Please do not post notices of third party firmware builds here, they will be deleted. Instead, please use the Third Party firmware builds forum for this purpose.
grsbanks
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DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by grsbanks »

EDIT: A bug was discovered in version 3.4 within hours of the release. The bug was corrected and version 3.4a released, this time without the bug... All links in this announcement have been updated to refer to version 3.4a.

Image

Release notes
  • Occasional lock-up fixed
  • Need for hard RESET upon booting removed
  • Speed improvement on battery power
  • SEED bug fixed
  • System menu (F2) visibility now saved in machine state
  • Free42 V2.0.17
Occasional lock-up fixed
This is the main reason why V3.4 was such a long time coming. We thought we had this issue nailed with V3.3 but then reports of DM42s hanging started coming in again, some also while printing. David spent nearly two weeks holed up in his batcave (we do allow him some food and heating sometimes), picked the firmware apart, added extra protection around sensitive areas where timing is critical, put it all back together again and left a pair of DM42s running at different clock frequencies before going missing for a week. When he (was) returned to his batcave, both DM42s were still running. Thus was born the foundation of this firmware version 3.4.

Need for hard RESET upon booting removed
This measure was originally brought in because it looked like some garbage data was surviving a soft RESET, confusing the CPU later on down the line and causing it to lock up.

Clearly this wasn't the case. The problem was elsewhere, so we've removed this part of the update process as it has been rendered unnecessary.

Speed improvement on battery power
This is another positive side effect of the bugfixing done by David. He was able to crank up the compiler optimisation again and get it to generate more efficient object code. Speed has increased by about 8% on V3.3.

SEED bug fixed
There was a change in the way Free42 handles the special case of "SEED 0" (seeding the pseudo-random number generator, PRNG, with a value derived from the real-time clock) introduced with Free42 2.0.7. This passed under the radar in the batcave so versions of DM42 firmware using Free42 V2.0.7 and later started generating identical sequences of random numbers if the PRNG was seeded repeatedly from the RTC.

This has been fixed in DM42 V3.4.

System menu (F2) visibility now saved
The "visible" state of the system menu was not saved in the DM42 machine state file. If you had that menu active, when you saved the DM42's state to the FAT drive or if you loaded in a previously saved state, that system menu would disappear because its visibility was not saved.

This is fixed as of V3.4.

Note that the system menu will still disappear if you load in a machine state saved with firmware versions prior to 3.4. This is because the menu's "visible" state is not saved in the state file by these versions of the firmware.

Free42 V2.0.17
This is the latest version of Free42 available at the time firmware 3.4 was built.

For a full list of bugfixes and features introduced into Free42 since the previous firmware version, head on over to the Project History page on Thomas Okken's Free42 site.

Update procedure
Download DM42_flash_3.4a.bin and follow instructions in the manual

SHA1 Checksum
0c16347cf5def1f1e5a201173ae2d8d79f14d736 DM42_flash_3.4a.bin
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who do not.
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akaTB
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by akaTB »

Downloaded, will upgrade once at home.

Thank you!
Greetings,
    Massimo
ajcaton
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jch
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by jch »

Update of my beta unit went flawlessly.

Thanks a lot to Thomas, Michael and David for their commitment and support.

Cheers.
Jean-Christophe.
jch
DM42 Beta sn:00050 / DM41X Beta sn:00016
rprosperi
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by rprosperi »

Both production and Beta machines updated with no issues.

Thank you David, Michael, Thomas and grsbanks for continued refinement of this fine machine!
--bob p

DM42: β00071 & 00282, DM41X: β00071 & 00656, DM10L: 071/100
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salvomic
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by salvomic »

Uploaded and flashed here in Mac OS X 10.13.3 via Terminal (dfu util) without a glitch.
Thank you!

Salvo
∫aL√0mic (IT9CLU) :: DM42 (SN: 00881), DM41X (SN 00523), DM16, HP Prime, 50g, 41CX, 42s, 71b, 15C, 12C, 35s, WP34s -- Free42
Geoff Quickfall
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by Geoff Quickfall »

Done and easy, Windows people, remember to run dmtool as administrator!

Cheers
Thomas_ER
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by Thomas_ER »

I've uploaded and flashed both units without problems (Windows7).
Now it does not seem necessary to reformat the USB disk.
Thank you all very much!

Thomas
[ HP48/49/50/42S/WP34/HP Prime/ DM42 (#00185+00318) ]
grsbanks
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by grsbanks »

Geoff Quickfall wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:26 pm
Windows people, remember to run dmtool as administrator!
Why?

No need to to that here...
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who do not.
toml_12953
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by toml_12953 »

I can't set Beep Mute. When I select 4 from the menu, nothing happens. I tried it on both my Beta and Production units.
Last edited by toml_12953 on Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tom L

Some people call me inept but I'm as ept as anybody!
DM10L SN: 059/100
DM41X SN: 00023 (Beta)
DM41X SN: 00506 (Shipping)
DM42 SN: 00025 (Beta)
DM42 SN: 00221 (Shipping)
WP43 SN: 00025 (Prototype)
grsbanks
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Re: DM42 Firmware V3.4 available

Post by grsbanks »

toml_12953 wrote:
Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:23 pm
I can't set Beep Mute. When I select 4 from the menu, nothing happens.
Damn.

Confirmed.

In the meantime you can do "SF 26" to enable beeps and "CF 26" to mute the buzzer.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who do not.
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