WARNING! DANGER!!!

Flashing your MG35 is a potentially DANGEROUS operation, and will probably VOID THE WARRANTY of your device.

Flashing using the GUI

1. Copy the .upgrade file of your choice to the MG35's hard drive via USB or NDAS. You can place it in any directory.
2. If not using NDAS, skip to step 4. If using NDAS, turn off the device and disconnect the network cable from the Ethernet port to ensure NDAS-connected PCs don't attempt to write to the NG35during the upgrade.
3. Power on the MG35.
4. Go to 'Local' media mode, then select 'Movie'.
5. Browse to the previously loaded .upgrade file and press 'Enter' on your remote.
6. Confirm that you wish to upgrade and then follow the instructions.

The upgrade will take about 2 minutes in total. Be sure not to power off the MG35 until the upgrade process tells you to do so.

Flashing using the serial console

The safest procedure to flash the firmware is:

1. Create or download a romfs firmware file. Beware, not a .upgrade file !!!
2. Copy the firmware image to the built-in HD. Don't rely on network flashes if you don't absolutely have to.
3. Power off the MG-35, leave it fo 10-20 seconds and the power it on.
4. Connect to the serial console as described .... here ...
5. Download the new firmware to the MG-35 and flash it

First, you will need a "ROMFS" image in the format that the MG-35 expects to see. The MG-35 "ROMFS" image is not a standard, linux style "ROMFS" image. Instead it consists of a 4 byte header followed by a gzipped linux kernel followed by a standard CramFS image. The 4 byte header is an offset to the location of the cramfs image in the flash memory.

The simplest way to create an MG-35 compliant "ROMFS" image is to start with a valid ".upgrade" file. Open the file in a hex editor and delete everything from the start of the file until 4 bytes before the gzipped linux kernel. Or to put it another way, search for the "ROFS" string and then delete everything up to and including this string and also the next 12 bytes.

The more difficult way would be to concatenate "linux.gz" and "cramfs.img", then insert 4 bytes at the beginning of the file. This 4 byte header is calculated as follows:

Header = 0x40000 + (Length of linux.gz) + 4

The 4 byte header is then inserted in front of "linux.gz" in little-endian format.

And for those who aren't comfortable with hex editors, and in the style of Blue Peter, here is one I made earlier. romfs.m35 This file is a version of an original English release of the MG-35 firmware, and is nothing fancy, but should get you back to a state where you can once again upload more up to date firmware.

Once you have the MG-35's "ROMFS" file ready, you can upload it to the device and write it to the flash using the following commands:

After the first command, you will need to tell your terminal program to upload the romfs via via ymodem. The upload will take 17-18 minutes. You can speed this up by using the serial loader's config command to change the serial speed (and also change at the PC end) but how often do you plan to brick your M-35?

Once you are returned to the "boot>" prompt, you can unplug the MG-35 to turn it off. Once you plug it back in and turn it on, it should boot with your newly flashed kernel and cramfs image.

Flashing using tftp

Serial is a bit slow, and if you're developing some new firmware you might brick your MG-35 fairly often, so here is an experimental way to speed up the process.

You need to perform the serial loader console boot as normal but then configure the MG-35's ethernet port. To do this use the commands "net config" (it prompts you for the required information) and then "net up" You will then need to configure a tftp server on a PC to serve from the directory /home/tftp. Remember that tftp requires the directory to be world readable and writeable. You then need to create a subdirectory in /home/tftp called bigmo and place the romfs.m35 in here. You can't change any of these paths/names without editing and reflashing the serial loader, and no-one has dared to try this yet!

First you need to configure your bootloader: my tftp server is 192.168.2.23.

  Welcome to JASPER boot loader

  boot> config net
  Protocol    : (0) None (1) Static IP (2) BOOTP (3) DHCP : (1)
  MAC Address : (00:02:a8:xx:xx:xx)
  IP Address  : (192.168.2.167)
  Netmask     : (255.255.255.0)
  Gateway     : (192.168.2.1)
  DNS         : (192.168.2.1)
  Server      : (192.168.2.23)

  boot> config file
  boot loader filename : (loader.bin)
  ROM filesystem filename : (romfs.ok)
  Kernel filename : (linux.bin)
  Image filename : (romfs.new)

Now you need to initialize the network interface and download the image:

  boot> net up
  DM9000 open
  Networking is enabled
  
  boot> net arp 192.168.2.23
  192.168.2.23      00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
  
  boot> download net romfs

  Connecting...
  ARP for 1, 192.168.2.23
  Receiving : ..............
 

The MG-35 will try and read the file "/home/tftp/bigmo/romfs.m35" from your tftp server. Check your tftp server's logs if this doesn't work. You can also try a tftp client on another machine as this may give better error messages.

The command to flash is:

 flash romfs

Flashing using JTAG connector

For now, we don't know if this is at all possible, but some work is done in this direction

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