96RAF Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 We all know that in order to enter Firmware Update Mode we press and hold the Elite STOP button then plug in the power, but what happens if we press any of the other buttons and plug in the power. Why would you want to do that you may ask? - well I decided to find out by intent if there was anything others may find out to their cost by accident and I did. I discovered a new way to brick my Elite. If you want to try any of this at home you do so at your own risk. Be very, very aware that if you press the ON/OFF button (which is very close to the STOP button) then plug in the power, the green led will flash continuously, the screen will stay blank and you will brick the Elite. Unplugging and replugging does not recover the situation - so be warned. I had to reload the firmware to get the Elite working again, so as to have a stable starting point. Pressing any other button including numbers and knobs, and powering up will just start your Elite up normally. The green led will flash once then stay on and the boot screen will cycle through as normal. That is except for the LOCO button. What happened when I pressed the LOCO button and powered up. The green led flashed once and Hornby came on screen as expected, so I released the button thinking it was a normal boot up again, but then the whole screen lit up with every available character, then it cleared and the caption EE-PASS came on screen. Presumably there could be an EE-FAIL if things were amiss. Logically to get out of it I pressed ESC but a 2-digit code came up on screen. This happened for all buttons and knobs including rotation, and the red and green leds also lit when their adjacent button was pressed, so obviously it is some sort of test mode that checks EE (whatever that is) and also the function of every button, knob and led. To clear the routine I just unplugged and replugged the Elite and it booted normally. I would have liked to have tried the same thing with the Select, but I don't have the option of being able to reload that unit if anything went wrong therefore I won't risk it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 Good one Rob, our knowledge improves every day, and without our Elites being put at risk. Next time someone has a possibly faulty Elite, you can tell them how to do the test routine and they may find out exactly what is wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2e0dtoeric Posted May 13, 2016 Share Posted May 13, 2016 EE might be the eeprom, the 'brain' chip where all the data is stored. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
96RAF Posted May 15, 2016 Author Share Posted May 15, 2016 The Elite processors are pics so i suppose those are eproms. now the frustrating thing. I tried to brick my test box elite using the on/off button at power on method to see if i could reset it using any of the other button sequence at power up, and it just booted normally, whereas previously it bricked. I could not kill it using any button plus power up option. even the loco option booted up normally if i didnt release as soon as hornby came on screen. more fiddling to do i suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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