[time-nuts] Have I wrecked my FE-5680A?

[Chuck Harris]

We have to sort of conclude that the failure is either
caused by bad data getting stored, or some sort of overflow
error.

It really is pretty unlikely that the firmware has been
changed, unless you happened to accidentally start a
flash burn routine, and it wasn't qualifying packets
properly.

If it isn't an overrun, or overflow error, then I would
suspect what you are sending to the port.  I have worked
with guys that are totally flustered when doing firmware
for devices that should qualify the data they receive.
When they don't know what to do (or are too lazy to try
and figure out the right thing to do) they simply stub
out the error path and go on.  Yuck!

If you have been sending an ill formed packet, you best
stop doing that ;-)

-Chuck Harris

Nick Sayer via time-nuts wrote:
> I'm sending at most a single 9 byte command per second. I currently wait for the
> TX reg empty flag, which means I'm sending them all back-to-back. I'd have to
> instead wait for the TX complete flag and then add a delay after that. It's
> doable, but it would astonish me if 9 bytes in a row were causing it heartburn.
>
> I'd love it if there were some way to restore the unit to factory settings /
> firmware. I'm on the cusp of sending an email to FEI to see if they do anything
> besides laugh at me.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>