What are they doing with the (perfectly good if updated) old one?
We'd all love to know this
Somebody told me they send them back to the distributor to get upgraded, but I'm not sure if I believe it. Nobody has offered to sell any to me, I know that
Does Techsavvy have a policy on replacing these DCM475 2.08 modems that are acting up and out of warranty?
Looks like they do. This is their reply:
You should be getting a DCM475 STAC.02.16 to replace the 02.08. Due to warranty expiring on current modem the new modem will not come with any warranty.
Mine expired in June and their reply to me was to find Teddy Boom and get the firmware upgraded through him - so I don't think they have a policy. I mentioned that other customers were being upgraded but mine is apparently too far out of warranty. (June instead of July). All I can say is wow, tech support second to none.
Well it has been a week since I plugged in my Teddy Boom flashed DCM475 (flashed to 2.16) and no drop outs at all. It solved my problems and I love my Teksavvy service again. Like I said I was prepared to go back to Rogers as the drop outs were so annoying.
Nice to see that Teksavvy is trying to help people out (even outside of warranty), but for $10 (if you are close to mlord or Teddy Boom) it is just worth getting it done.
Thanks to mlord and Teddy Boom for hacking up a solution when no one else would.
I too got my DCM475 firmware upgraded this weekend at mlord's and I have no more dropped connections. Thank you again mlord! I think mlord and Teddy Boom deserve many kudos for this. And I hope Teksavvy recognize and acknowledge the amount of help they are getting from the community.
I too got my DCM475 firmware upgraded this weekend at mlord's and I have no more dropped connections. Thank you again mlord! I think mlord and Teddy Boom deserve many kudos for this. And I hope Teksavvy recognize and acknowledge the amount of help they are getting from the community.
This just started happening to me too in the last week or so. I posted a Direct topic for it, I hope there's some official communication on how to resolve this though - it seems weird to cover a modem for a year and then it has issues that require you to either manually update firmware on it with a JTAG kit or outright replace the device.
In digging through some stuff in my basement I found a buffered jtag unit that I wanted to repurpose and do some teksavvy firmware upgrades for the guys north of the GTA. Can Teddy Boom or mlord post the windows software and a copy of the firmware? Just want to give back.
I use a USBJTAG NT, but it isn't really being used as a JTAG in this application. It is just functioning as an SPI FLASH programmer. Is yours a buffered parallel port JTAG, or is it something more sophisticated? I wouldn't be surprised if software was available to use it as an SPI programmer.. However, I'm pretty much certain the USBJTAG NT software wouldn't do you a lot of good. It is downloadable from their site if you want to take a look, and certainly it is helpful to get familiar with how the file systems are organized.
mlord's project may be more useful for you, he has done a lot of the low level work to get his working, and you could use that as a guide to develop something from scratch if you are motivated
The Serial cable includes an SPI flash, and the company has released utilities for using the cable itself to reprogram other copies of the cable. So, it looks like these might be a great inexpensive SPI programmer for our purposes »www.ftdichip.com/Support ··· ties.htm
Yes, I have a buffered parallel port jtag. I tried it last night and it worked well, but I take your point that it may not work as the SPI FLASH programmer. I will keep digging as I do recall seeing some rudimentary schematics on how to build your own SPI Flash programmer.
I have a DCM 475 too and recently it's been kind of slow and unresponsive at times, either that's a issue with my routers or the disconnections are caused from some sort of switch because it ONLY happened when I played Heroes & Generals and immediately had the game crash, AND as a bonus, I saw the network actually showing that it's not connected to the internet.
Either games can trigger internet loss, or the modem/isp can detect or react to something that triggers it.
Now on the other hand if Teksavvy and the other small isp manages to convince Google to bring their fiber network construction to Canada, it'll be a whole other ballgame.
That is, if my country isn't so stuck up about everything politically. These days, Canada isn't so much as different as America in terms of the good and bad stuff happening.
Oh right my pingplotter's being going on for almost half an hour and there's no one at home using it, so why is it at 400ms in ping?!
Yeah, the cheapest, easiest way to assemble a rig, is to clone my setup.
The SPI portion is the simplest -- just need a 3.3V Arduino compatible chip (eg. Atmega328p, cost $3.50). that by itself will do everything needed that any JTAG rig would otherwise do at greater cost.
Where the expense comes into it, are the clips ($3/each, need 6), and a 12VDC to 3.3VDC power supply (simple tab regulator + 2 high-grade capacitors, about $5), a breadboard ($4), some "dupont cables" for the clips ($5-20, depending on the source), an SD-card socket (to hold the new firmware) ($10), a couple of LEDs, resistors, and that's mostly it.
I'm more than happy to provide the code, or even a programmed Atmega328p chip. Or even the fully assembled rig. But when I add up the itemized parts list for the full rig, it's in the $40-$50 range. Stuff adds up.
But this rig does have a huge advantage: turnkey. No PC, or PC software required. Just hook it up, plug in the power, and it flashes the modem.
Please tell me you don't have your VoIP SPA before your router........ It should be:
Modem -> Router -> SPA
-> Computer
Having your SPA before the router is probably the cause of the increased ping from hops 2 & 3, not to mention the fact that you're seeing spiking to your router... If you're hard wired into your router, something's seriously wrong with either the cable itself, or a setting on your system.
I changed my network yesterday with a new router and switch.
The switch links the desktops in the living room and ties it to the router in the basement that has a dual band wireless network and gigabit ethernet speeds.
The VOIP connects to the Netgear router directly this time.
Before it was two routers and this caused some issues on latency because the routers were slower and placed together so they delay the packets a bit, with the VOIP on the basement router.
The new router I got I can configure the QoS priority on the VOIP so it uses less bandwidth most likely.
Gigabit routing also works from this desktop to the modem.
Seems they just upgraded my area to 8 downstream and 4 upstream bonded channels, and now it seems my modem's rebooted at least once on its' own. I'll keep an eye on it, but that being said, the DCM475 has a 1 year warranty, correct?
If that's the case, I'm starting to think it's just easier to get it exchanged.
I do hope to visit Toronto for a few days in a week or two. And if/when I go, I will bring one of my flashing rigs along for the ride.
This opens up a couple of possibilities..
1. If somebody there wants to organize/host a 2-3 hour get together, with others who need their modems reflashed, then we could all meet up and get the job done then.
and/or
2. I could leave a flashing rig behind with someone at cost ($30-$40), who might then provide the service to others, or do whatever / however they want really.
Ideally, this would happen in an area away from where Teddy Boom (downtown) already provides this kind of help. Somewhere (just) North of the 401 might be ideal, to help people in North York, Scarberia, etc..
But I'm not organizing it. Somebody who needs help should volunteer to get things rolling. Think of it as a Christmas Charity activity or something.
2. I could leave a flashing rig behind with someone at cost ($30-$40), who might then provide the service to others, or do whatever / however they want really.
For a long time I didn't think so, but recent evidence suggests that firmware upgrades to SB612x are just as important as upgrades for DCM475. If you could set it up so that swapping the flash card would allow you to upgrade different modems, and include a flash card for each of the SB612x and DCM475, that would be ideal. I can get you a donor SB612x if you want...
If you could set it up so that swapping the flash card would allow you to upgrade different modems, and include a flash card for each of the SB612x and DCM475, that would be ideal. I can get you a donor SB612x if you want...
Yup, could do that. I forget, does the SB612x also use SPI flash? If so, then I'll make it so both images can just be on the same card. The rig can auto-detect the kind of modem it is attached to, and choose the correct file based on that. Easy.
A donor SB612x would be good. If you can arrange one, I'll drop by and pick it up some time before Christmas. Should be able to make the programming changes while I'm there (Toronto), too.
Unfortunately that doesn't answer whether or not TekSavvy offers the year warranty on the DCM475.
On the units they sell, yes, they advertise / provide a full year warranty, with replacement. This covers incompatible firmware (like 02.08) as well. But only for the year, possibly plus a little bit.
