Radio locked with the latest firmware

[n1id]

Tried this on both my gd77s. First boot still locked. Immediately second boot holding a Key down. I use arrow key. All is well. Tried this multiple times and it’s repeatable. Good news I have it work after only 1 reboot every time this way

[W1AEX]

Roger, Colin, and Alex,

I loaded the firmware posted in this thread and did not experience the power-on lockup through a few power up cycles. However, the GD77 has been running for several hours so I have not yet had a chance to try it from a cold start after it's been sitting for awhile. All the keypad functions seem to work fine for setting up my preferred options and the usual operating.

I definitely like the implementation of scanning in this version with Scan mode:HOLD and Scan mode:PAUSE in the menu options section and the initialization of scanning by hitting the orange top button and the green key. Works great!

73,

Rob W1AEX

[YT5HOK]

Working fine for me too. Just to report.

[IZ2EIB]

Hi Roger and all.
From my side it does works partially, because the new firmware fix only in part the keyboard matter I have with my GD-77.
With this new firmware then my transceiver does not seem to get stuck again while using its keyboard, but anyway I can not transmit over digital because despite a valid DMR identifier is in the transceiver through the codeplug, from the side of the GD-77 it seems to be missing.
I can not even enter my DMR ID using the sequence of buttons [FUNCTION] + [#], because doing so, as I explained yesterday, I get the keyboard lock in the same way as what would happen by pressing the button [*], with the aggravating that while with the firmwares that I used yesterday then with the sequence [FUNCTIONS] + [*] I was able to unlock the GD-77, now with this new one OpenGD77_201912011952.sgl if I press [FUNCTION] + [*] the display shows me the contacts and there is no way to unlock the transceiver that therefore it can no longer transmit even in analog.
In order to fix the problem I tried with the old original firmware GD-77_V2.6.3.sgl from Radioddity that was used in the past when the transceiver had transmit problems, but then neither the original CPS program from Radioddity, nor the Community Edition from Roger succeed to communicate with the GD-77, so that it is not possible to load the codeplug.
Even with this old GD-77_V2.6.3 firmware the menu tags are blank, since all the letters are missing, only numbers and symbols are visible.
Then I tried to use the original firmware GD-77_V3.0.6.sgl from Radioddity and with this one I managed to load the codeplug (no password is required anymore, could it be due to the OpenGD77_201912011952 firmware that managed to do something about it?), but still the menus have no description, numbers and symbols are visible, unfortunately no letters.
At this point I tried again with the firmware GD-77_V2.6.3 from Radioddity obtaining the same result described before, so I loaded the firmware 3.1.8 from Radioddity and with this one I managed to put the codeplug, but sadly still no letters of the alphabet are visible, only symbols and numbers.
As requested by Roger I backed up FLASH and EEPROM and sent to him their contents and so I got the idea to compare an old backup that I had done months ago with this one of the FLASH that I just made today, because as far I know from the location 90000hex onwards there should be fonts, although actually even more weirdly now the letters are missing but the numbers are still there.
From the comparison it emerged that with the Open firmware from 90000hex there are no fonts, it is all fill with zeroes hex, maybe that is why with FlashManager / CPS Community Edition I can not restore my GD-77 even using the factory firmwares released by Radioddity along with my working FLASH backup.
This being the case, how would it be possible to restore the functioning of the transceiver with the original factory firmware released by Radioddity if between the Open and the official versions some parameters pointing to different locations end up overwriting each other?
In my opinion being able to return at the official firmware from Radioddity could be a way of trying to fix the matter, even considering the fact that it should always be possible revert from Open firmware to the official one from Radioddity and go back.
I am pretty sure that it is possible to fix also from FlashManager / CPS Community Edition using a backup of the FLASH obtained from the same GD-77 when it was working, backup that I own.
I have tried so, but at the moment I have not succeeded.
The fact is that if I use the firmware OpenGD77_201912011952 then I can not transmit and in any case some functions do not match with the keys on the keyboard, while if instead I use an official firmware from Radioddity the tags of the menus are blank and their descriptions are reduced to numbers and symbols, no letters, making it impossible to succeed to use the device (of course also the messages at power on do not appear, and there whether it is letters or numbers, simply nothing is displayed).

73 de Fabio IZ2EIB

[W1AEX]

Running the "OpenGD77_201912011952.sgl" firmware version posted earlier in this thead, I encountered the frozen keyboard symptom when powering up after the GD77 was powered down for roughly 3 hours. I power cycled once and the GD77 came up fine with the keyboard fully functional. As requested, I attached a zip file containing my FLASH_BACKUP.bin and EEPROM_BACKUP.bin backups from several days ago.

Hope that helps!

73, Rob W1AEX

[VK3KYY]

Thanks Rob

Can you also post your codeplug.

I have tried a few of my GD-77's and none of them have the problem, so I think it must be related to the codeplug data or the settings

[W1AEX]

Sure Roger, glad to send the current codeplug along.

73, Rob W1AEX

[VK3KYY]

Thanks

Loading a codeplug is easier for me than loading the data.

Loading the Flash data I have to make sure i backup my calibration before installing someone elses Flash and then restore my calibration into their Flash data.

BTW.

Apart from leaving the radio a few hours, does removing the battery make any difference ?

[W1AEX]

Roger,

Understood about the codeplug being an easier way to test things.

I don't believe removing the battery causes any problem as I generally swap out the battery halfway through the second day of use. It has never locked up for me after a battery swap. As a quick test, I just shut the GD77 down and removed the battery for a minute, then installed it and powered up. The GD77 started right up without any issue. I had a suspicion when the first lockup occurred that it might be happening when the battery was near depletion, but the lockups seem to occur without regard to the level of charge in the battery.

73, Rob W1AEX

[VK3KYY]

Hi Rob

Umm. This is a strange one.

I wonder if its just random and it appears to be related to how long the radio has been off.

Is there a quick way to replicate this, or is the only way to leave the radio off for ages ?