upgrade problem 6300

Steve Jones gw0gei

I sold my 6500 this week which had been running on 1.6.21 on this laptop with no issues. I bought a friends 6300 as a temp measure whilst waiting to get hold of a 6700. The 6300 has not been used since 5 months so was probably running on 1.4 previously. I plugged it in to my set up and when it asked me to upgrade the firmware I clicked on the upgrade button - but no purple light and no upgrade - eventually clicking on ssdr box says not responding. Have tried a reboot, a factory reset on the 6300 and have tried early version 1.5 but to no avail.

I have probably done something / missed something that I previously did when upgrading my previous 6500. Any quick ideas, before I start trawling through previous release notes to find out where I went wrong? I seem to recall having to do a manual uninstall on one of the major releases - I thought it was 1.6? As my laptop already had 1.6.21 running ok on it I thought it would just upgrade the 6300 to current firmware. Clearly not! I will give it another go tomorrow night after work but any obvious ideas and best way to fix would be appreciated.

Steve gw0gei 

Jim Gilliam

Perhaps you will need to uninstall SmartSDR and install with the 6300. If this is true, I have become utterly frustrated doing the manual uninstall of SmartSDR and several mentioned using REVO as a program to uninstall SmartSDR. I purchased Revo Uninstall pro and have never regretted it. It does the "normal" uninstall and then opts to do a scan of other remaining parts of SmartSDR and gives you the option of uninstalling them. Since I have been using this program, I have had 100% success of uninstalling this program. After which I had 100% success of re-installing the program.

Jim, K6QE

dlwarnberg

Steve, I had no issues going from a 6300 to a 6500 with the upgrade... make sure that the 6300 is completely booted, then start SmartSDR and try upgrade.  When I've have had issues it was because the radio had been up and running a while with out a recycle of the radio.

You should see the radio selectable in the initial start screen of SmartSDR, if you do not I suspect a network issue

Give that a shot... 

Ken - NM9P

sounds like a help desk issue. You may need to uninstall everything and install a specific SSDR version and upgrade from it. Or something like that. Network connection, as David mentioned, is a good thing to check, too.

Steve K9ZW

Hi Steve GW0GEI

Would be helpful to determine if the glitch is actually SmartSDR versions, Network or hardware.

Would you have access to a clean machine, one that never had SmartSDR on it, to work from?

If a quick divide-n-conquer exercise doesn't reveal anything I'd head to the help desk. 

GL and hope it is something simple!  (BTW like your new contest call!)

73

Steve K9ZW

Tim - W4TME

I have converted this topic to a support HelpDesk ticket (http://helpdesk.flexradio.com) for expedited issue resolution.  If anyone else is experiencing an issue similar to this one, please submit a HelpDesk support ticket for issue resolution.

Steve Gw0gei

Thanks all - now sorted I think Tim. I could see the 6300 on both laptops I had been using with my 6500 but neither would perform the upgrade. I discovered this morning that I had not done a reset of the 6300 so after reminding myself of the procedure I rebooted the laptop then did a full factory reset of the 6300. The upgrade then worked with the purple light showing and a reboot afterwards saw the firmware complete and the radio operating. Tested on my morning 80m net with basic profile and hooked up to my new expert 2k pa and all ok. Re configured my dx lab logger suite for the different radio so just n1mmplus to check this weekend and re hook up of my Kuhne 4m tvtr and pa and then I can build some proper profiles to suit the new pa. having tried the 6500 for eight months or so I am going back to basics with the 6300 pending more info on the so2r box and a decision whether to get a 6700 or the so2r add on box. In the meantime, more work required to set up the expert 2k for full auto operation with ddutil, so I can then relocate the radio and amp into the walk in cupboard behind the shack wall , and dispense with my 2x6port auto antenna switch by putting my 6m and Hf antennas straight onto the six ports on the new amp. All part of the learning curve:-) 73 Steve gw0gei / gw9J

K1UO Larry

Steve...  I see in your plan a mention of connecting your Antennas to the built in 6 port antenna switch on the SPE2Kfa...but...  what are you planning to do for equipment protection during lightning season?  I am wondering how to handle this exact situation with my remote SPE2k and I am considering removing the antennas from the SPE and going through a remote antenna switch so they can be left either grounded or open when the station is not in use rather than be directly connected to the Amplifier.  A little more complexity added as Flex does not currently provide direct bcd data to drive a remote coax switch.   I know there are ways to do this but believe me when I say keeping layout and station control simple is a big plus.  The more peripheral equipment and software added at a remote location is NOT something to strive for.  Waiting for Flex WAN control to at least remove a part of the current concoction of peripheral equipment and cabling.  

Bryan Weber

Same issue for me.  I tried to upgrade to .21 on my 6300.   The upgrade doesn't work and I can't downgrade back to .17.    I just wasted two hours on my life with buggy garbage and still have no radio.   Not too happy at this point.

Steve K9ZW

If you post some details folks will try to help you.  

Or you could open a Help Desk ticket if you think it is something unique.

No point in just being frustrated though!  

Feel for you & 73

Steve 
K9ZW

Steve Jones gw0gei

I dont know why it took a full factory reset to get the 6300 to upgrade from 1.4 to 1.6.21 but it did work. I share your pain too as I sold my backup legacy radio ic7400 a few weeks back so I was radio less for 24hrs until the factory reset did the trick. Lesson learnt, an ft817nd is to be ordered shortly for mountain and mobile use and as a shack back up radio. Re lightening question, I currently ground the antennas by switching the 12v to the microham 2x6port antenna switch which sits in the walk in cupboard. I planned on replacing that with a 4o3a 8port ethernet controlled switch, but the reported buggy control software for that is putting me off currently. I have also opted for the spe 2k pa as it looks like the new 4o3a pa will not now do 4m as well as 6m and i do not now want to be an early adopter- had too much pain with windows and the 1.6 ssdr upgrade driver issues for that so will see how early purchasers get on. I will leave the microham 3kw switch in line until I decide how to protect from lightening - not a major issue here in the uk. Despite the recent pain I still dont see anything better than a flex 6000 out there at present under 5k sterling. A new k3s loaded with the filters and second rx I would need plus tvtr board etc would cost me double the price of the 6300 and still need lp pan2 to give me a band display. So far the 4k spent on the spe 2k amp looks like a wise decision compared to spending 6k here in the uk on a 6700.

Bryan Weber

I had windows 8.1 running.  I updated it to .21.  It could see the radio, but as soon as you open it, it loses contact with the radio and crashes.  Tried to downgrade and no luck there.  I upgraded to Windows 10 and took the radio back to factory reset and it now works.  HARDLY how it should work on an upgrade, but I got it going. 

Bryan Weber

Thanks Steve.