My 990 is upgraded at last. Thanks to all for encouragement and advice, and especially to Steve who talked me through it on the phone. Removing and replacing the power cable after the Device Restart message instead of just clicking the master power switch seemed to make the difference, thought I thought that had been one of the things I'd tried before. Anyway it worked this time.

Was anybody else surprised at having to name all the audio inputs from scratch (i.e., blanks on the display and menu) when you went to reconfigure after upgrading?

I wasn't surprised at all. it cleared out and reset all my settings too after the upgrade. it's a PITA, but once it's done, it's done.

At least - it's done until the next upgrade. Maybe to minimize future upgrade PITA's we ought to make a note of which line of the configuration menu screen each of the audio inputs is on. TUNER is on the first line, but the blanks on the other lines caused me some guesswork, and my first guesses weren't all correct. Did any of you have a better strategy?

nope. but after the upgrade.. i was no longer able to run the auto calibration. to this day it still won't work anymore. before the upgrade it worked.. after the upgrade.. no worky anymore.

I just got back from a long-ish trip and decided to throw caution to the wind and try the firmware upgrade via USB (it didn't work). Fortunately, I had a serial cable and my notebook seems to be one of the dying breed with a functioning serial port. Using the serial port, it updated just fine.

I get the same error on the autocalibration. It claims my rears are large and my mains are small and suggests I switch them. You'd think someone would have stumbled on that bug during testing...

Otherwise, the upgrade went without a hitch. I'm going to have to get around to calibrating things manually with a sound pressure meter.

In spite of those nuissance items, the bass management does seem to be a lot better now.

Perhaps they'll release a firmware fix for the new firmware so that autocalibrate will work again and USB upgrading will work properly.

I'll play with it over the next few days and see how things go.

Cheers,

There have always been cases of this happening, although in some cases people have been able to resolve it by adjusting the placement of the microphone. Some folks have had autosetup work better in their systems with the new firmware. Mine behaved the same (although I used a camera tripod in both cases to get the microphone up to ear level - and above the back of the couch). There have also been several reports such as yours in which the autosetup claimed small mains and large surrounds with the new firmware. I'm not sure if there even was a change to the autosetup in the firmware. Of course, it would be cool if the autosetup could be refined in a future firmware release.

It has to be a firmware issue since nothing else in the system or the environment was changed and autocalibration has always worked in the past (though it never quite got things right).

I've just tried listening to some 5.1 music programming and there is definitely an audible improvement. So in spite of the glitches, it seems to be a worthwhile endeavor to upgrade.

Out of curiosity, I wonder if Sherwood firmware would work in our units or if Outlaw firmware would work in a Sherwood?

Cheers,

I have heard that Sherwood firmware works on the Boston Acoustics units, but the 990's DVI switching isn't supported by the Sherwood firmware and I wonder what else might be squirrelly.

Got the upgrade done yesterday. I did this with a friend of mine helping. Both of us are technically oriented, and not novices with electronics/computers. I can't say how many device restart errors we saw, following all instructions step-by-step. At one point, the original firmware was erased prior to the error, leaving me in a very precarious position. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN!!! This is a firmware upgrade, and if it fails, you've got a very expensive brick. I don't know why or how we finally got it to work (tried various USB and RS-232 options, but no idea why the one that worked actually did). While the majority of people appear to have gotten things working, there are way too many errors in the installer, as evidenced in this thread, for it to have come out in that form. A firmware installer needs to work, first time, every time, as long as the instructions are followed exactly. This one does not have that level of reliability, and should not have been released until it did IMO.

I have been following this thread since it started (as well as the other threads).
I would like to do the upgrade, but there are more mis-installs than there are first time successes (or second or third). I can live with my 990 the way it is, but why?
Why can't we get a reliable firmware upgrade?
Scott? Are you guys looking into why there are soo many attempted/failures with this?
I had planed on doing my upgrade in the next 2 weeks, as I will be rearranging my entire system, but am just so leery about having the same problems that others are having. If it goes wrong, my entire system, audio and video, will be worthless and unusable until it could be fixed. Everything relies on the 990 to work right. I don't want to have to deal with that scenario.

Lonster