Radio locked with the latest firmware

[VK3KYY]

Roger,

Zero problems with the second version of the "Keypad Resistor Pullups" firmware. I have moved on to the Tri-Band Squelch version which I think has the same code as the keypad resistor pullups v2 release. Everything is running beautifully!

73, Rob W1AEX

The TriBand squelch has the pullups and also a small delay between strobing the column select lines (on the keypad) and reading the row lines into the MCU. This is in case there is any oscillation on the wires between the display and the main PCB.
"Ringing" of data lines is a common problem because the slew rate on the GPIO lines on modern processors is very fast, potentially 50Mhz or more.

Actually, that gives me an idea.

The slew rate on the GPIO pins feeding the keyboard is set to kPORT_FastSlewRate

Code: Select all

enum _port_slew_rate
{
    kPORT_FastSlewRate = 0U, /*!< Fast slew rate is configured. */
    kPORT_SlowSlewRate = 1U, /*!< Slow slew rate is configured. */
};

In this setup which we added the other day to enable the pullups.

Code: Select all

	 port_pin_config_t config = {
	      kPORT_PullUp,
	      kPORT_FastSlewRate,
	      kPORT_PassiveFilterDisable,
	      kPORT_OpenDrainDisable,
	      kPORT_LowDriveStrength,
	      kPORT_MuxAsGpio,
	      kPORT_UnlockRegister,
	 };

There are still some radios having keyboard issues, so I wonder if some of these settings could be adjusted to help with the problem,

eg.
Change the slew rate to low, to stop ringing.
Also possibly turn up the DriveStrength to kPORT_HighDriveStrength

[IZ2EIB]

Hi Roger and everyone.
Sadly also me still I have freezing with other previous firmwares, while instead with these which have the pull-up feature enabled the problem seems to be gone.
From my side firmware_201912060954-PULLUPS.sgl already fix the freezing problem but now I am running OpenGD77_201912061620.sgl on my GD-77, because it is an improoved version of the first.
Roger you are really a genius!
I hope pull-up feature will be alway enable from now on! (I am happy it is so on OpenGD77_201912062146.sgl too).
So with these firmwares which have the pull-up feature enabled I have been able to bring back to life my GD-77, very, very well!
That said there are some weird thing that I do not understand though.
After having had freezing problems due to the firmware issue with the keyboard management, I could only manage to load the Open firmware on my GD-77, no longer the factory firmwares from Radioddity.
I have some working backups of the FLASH with which I thought it was possible to restore the factory firmware from Radioddity, but when I try to load them on my GD-77 on reaching 12% the transceiver always resets itself and the transfer stops.
I need to load a working backup of the FLASH content because if not after restoring a factory firmware from Radioddity by download it on the transceiver the menus are blank, as no messages are displayed, only symbols and number, but no letter, so the transceiver becomes unusable.
In order to check if my GD-77 has not hidden problems would for me useful switch to a factory firmware and testing things, how would it be supposed to do this?
From what I know having read it on a web page written by Jason Reilly VK7ZJA (http://members.optuszoo.com.au/jason.re ... 77tune.htm), GD-77 has four types of memory:
1) EEPROM 64kbyte: half of the codeplug is stored here.
2) External flash memory 1Mbyte: the other half of the codeplug, DMR IDs written by ActiveClient.exe, RF alignment data and even display character font data is stored here.
3) Internal MCU flash memory 512kbyte: this is where the radio firmware lives.
4) Internal MCU RAM 128kbyte: used by the MCU for it’s own internal operational use.
If I understood correctly, it should be enough to put the same factory firmware from Radioddity running on the GD-77 when the backup of the FLASH content was done, reload that backup of the FLASH content in order to gain calibration, fonts, and so on, and then load a codeplug, since in the EEPROM there is only the other half of the codeplug and therefore it cannot be the cause of the blank menus.
Is not so?
Infact one thing that I noticed is that not all factory firmwares released by Radioddity have fonts and other things allocated in the same position, while the calibration data are always on the same hexadecimal address.
The Open firmware also places fonts and other parameters in different locations than those released by Radioddity, so it is quite normal overwrite something, instead it is not normal for it to be impossible to restore everything from a working backup of the FLASH content.
Any hint?
Thanks.

73 best regards the Fabio IZ2EIB

[VK3KYY]

Fabio

I think there are still some problems with the keypad which we are investigating

Re: Fonts

The OpenGD77 firmware does not store fronts in the Flash like the official firmware does.

The fonts are contain inside the firmware. The Flash is only changed if you modify a channel that is stored in the Flash (I think this is channels with index > 128)
The Flash is also updated if you modify the calibration using the CPS,but nothing else is changed in the Flash, so the official firmware should still work.

The only thing that will be a problem for the official firmware is if you update to 80 channel zones as the official firmware does not support this.

[IZ2EIB]

Fabio

I think there are still some problems with the keypad which we are investigating

Hi Roger.
Yes I agree, it is sadly probable.

Re: Fonts

The OpenGD77 firmware does not store fronts in the Flash like the official firmware does.

The fonts are contain inside the firmware. The Flash is only changed if you modify a channel that is stored in the Flash (I think this is channels with index > 128)
The Flash is also updated if you modify the calibration using the CPS,but nothing else is changed in the Flash, so the official firmware should still work.

The only thing that will be a problem for the official firmware is if you update to 80 channel zones as the official firmware does not support this.

Thanks for the kind explanation, Roger.
I understand, but sadly the thing there is and I am not able to fix it.
Not that the matter is serious, since I can use the OpenGD77 firmware which is much better than the factory one provided by Radioddity, but if the restore must work it must do so always, that is what annoys me.
Meanwhile, I keeping with some experiments, hoping to find a solution, more than anything else for a matter of stubbornness.
I tried to restore from another GD-77 of a colleague amateur radio of mine not worrying about calibration data, but nothing, the usual result: blank menu, there are symbols and numbers but no letters.
However doing so I found that the calibration data of his GD-77 are exactly the same as mine, as I have extrapolated them from their backups and compared them to each other, finding them perfectly identical: really a nice coincidence.
Keep in touch.

73 best regards de Fabio IZ2EIB

[VK3KYY]

My father also has this problem on his new radio.

We are currently trying to track down the problem, but because the radio starts working OK after about 10 minutes, it’s very hard to analyse the problem while it still exists.

Also I do not live near my father, in fact he lives in the UK and I live in Australia. Which makes bug fixing even harder

[VK3KYY]

Can anyone who is still having problems with their keypad please try this version, which should not be correctly enabling pullup resistors on the "row" keypad input pins of the MCU

[IZ2EIB]

Hi Roger.
Thank you very much for your priceless support, I appreciate it very much!
I tried your test firmware OpenGD77_201912112027_keyboard_input_pullups.sgl without noticing anything different from the previous ones that have solved the freezing problem.
For me all of them, including this later, they solve the freezing problem, but still there is the impossibility of restoring my GD-77 to the stock firmware from Radioddity and that very often using that firmwares my transceiver transmits simultaneously on both time slot although it is programmed and set correctly.
I also spotted that on my GD-77 the latest Open firmwares, including OpenGD77_201912112027_keyboard_input_pullups.sgl, seem to show font problems.
It would simply be a wrong representation of the capital letter M, but I need to go further into the question.
I pretty sure that all the issue I reported here on the forum are the result of something that has been corrupted due to the problem with the keyboard management which was fixed with subsequent firmware releases, but which nevertheless prevented my GD-77 from being properly restored, both with the Open firmware and the factory one from radioddity.
This would be a fortuitous event that has changed the correct functioning of my transceiver, a condition that I immediately thought could be fixed being able to managing to load the factory firmware from Radioddity.
If such a fortuitous event had not happened, my GD-77 would have behaved more or less like that of other users and would not have shown all the oddities that I have described here on the forum, but unfortunately it has been struck by bad luck.
However, to make a long story short, in the end I managed to restore my GD-77 to the Radioddity factory firmware and check that it works and has no hardware failure: stock firmware v3.1.5 from Radioddity did the trick!
For those who remember the firmware v3.1.5 was released by Radioddity as a rescue firmware and in fact it restored my GD-77.
It was not need to do anything but load it in the transceiver and immediately everything started working again, including chinese characters!
With the firmware v3.1.5 in the info menu the transceiver is described as MD-760, not GD-77.
No calibration, no further upload of FLASH, EEPROM or other, nothing at all, the GD-77 is started without problems.
However, I put again the firmware v3.1.8, which was what I had before switching to the Open firmware, just to do the tests and make sure that everything was well, as luckily was later confirmed.
Having ascertained that everything is good, tomorrow I will upload again the Open firmware on my GD-77, now it is very late here in Italy, and I will continue the experimentation.
I am sure that I will not have any of the problems I had, and even something else happened, now I know how to fix it.
Thanks Roger, keep in touch!

73 best regards de Fabio IZ2EIB

[IZ2EIB]

Hi Roger.
After checking for the good functioning of my GD-77 using the stock firmware from Radioddity I reloaded the Open firmware OpenGD77_201912112027_keyboard_input_pullups.sgl and I continued the tests.

12122019_INFO.png (1.01 KiB) Viewed 5677 times

As far as I can say, I have not noticed any anomaly with the keyboard and menus, but I honestly can not say if the problems I had with the previous ones were due to the state of my transceiver rather than to them.
However now I can restore my GD-77 to any factory firmware from Radioddity without first having to use their rescue firmware v3.1.5 released in order to fix the displaced frequency error that occours while performing reset using their stock firmware v3.1.3.
I wonder what special the firmware v3.1.5 from Radioddity has for being able to restore my transceiver, thing that any other firmware or method has failed to do (I noticed that the RF calibration data created by the rescue firmware v3.1.5. are different from the ones I get by restoring with firmware 2.6.3 from Radioddity, which is the firmware I generally always used in case of need).
Any way, sadly there is still the random problem of simultaneous transmission on both time slots (http://opengd77.com/viewtopic.php?f=11& ... 3d3464055c):

12122019.jpg (43.22 KiB) Viewed 5677 times

Is there any particular check that I can do to help track down the problem?
Let me know, please.

73 best regards de Fabio IZ2EIB

[VK3KYY]

Does the radio work OK with the official firmware, or is it one of the radios where the calibration data got corrupted by the official firmware ?

[IZ2EIB]

Hi Roger.
Thanks for the help!

Does the radio work OK with the official firmware, or is it one of the radios where the calibration data got corrupted by the official firmware ?

My GD-77 has no calibration problems doing the reset, it had them with the old 4.6.x firmware with which it was delivered to me when I bought it years ago, but immediately afterwards updated with new firmware it has settled.
When I had calibration problems with the original firmware from Radioddity, I fixed them by uploading the stock firmware 2.6.3 from Radioddity and then updating the transceiver to their most recent firmware which at the time they had released, however, I do not remember exactly what revision it had.
From then on there were no problems anymore and I updated the firmware up to revision 3.1.8, as I understood that subsequent releases could cause problems.
I used the 3.1.8 firmware on the transceiver with the CPS Community Edition until I switched to the Open firmware and never it had any problems.
Considering that by checking the transceiver with the factory firmware from Radioddity there is no problem, so I would exclude it is broken.

About the problems with the keyboard, I noticed that occasionally by quickly scrolling through the channels with the [<] and [>] keys, my GD-77 resets itself, that is it turns off and on again on the channel and zone in which it was at the first start.
This yes I think is a flaw related to keyboard management.
For the rest, nothing else to add.

73 best regards de Fabio IZ2EIB