firmware upgrade question

[ScanTheFreqs]

when you upgrade a scanners firmware, how exactly does that work? like when you go to upload it does it completely replace the current firmware? or does it just add to it? and if it does just add to it does there come a time when the firmware is completely full and cant take any more upgrades??

 

[mikey60]

when you upgrade a scanners firmware, how exactly does that work? like when you go to upload it does it completely replace the current firmware? or does it just add to it? and if it does just add to it does there come a time when the firmware is completely full and cant take any more upgrades??

In General it replaces what's there.

Mike

 

[slicerwizard]

when you upgrade a scanners firmware, how exactly does that work? like when you go to upload it does it completely replace the current firmware?

Yes, it completely replaces it.

or does it just add to it? and if it does just add to it does there come a time when the firmware is completely full and cant take any more upgrades??

If it worked that way, the scheme would be defective by design.

 

[poltergeisty]

Read that a flash chip can only be flashed so many times. So then there would be a limit it would seem however, that is unless the radio will be flashed well over 150 times (So I've heard). I know SD flash media is more than that in terms of reads and writes, but the memory here may be a little different...


Basically, you will never reach the limit.


Now this has me wondering about how many times one could read/write from a two way radio? Like a trunked capable radio?

 

[gmclam]

FLASH updates

when you upgrade a scanners firmware, how exactly does that work? like when you go to upload it does it completely replace the current firmware? or does it just add to it? and if it does just add to it does there come a time when the firmware is completely full and cant take any more upgrades??

First of all, only some scanners are designed to be upgraded. Typical modern scanners store the firmware in FLASH memory. The specs for most FLASH chips state they can be written only about 100,000 times. In reality, most chips can be written to more; but that's all that is guaranteed.

The exactness of FLASH updates depends on the design of the scanner/device. Typically there has to be some program running in the scanner to receive the new firmware and do the physical writing to FLASH. From a user point of view, the entire firmware code is updated. The limit is what I wrote above.