Bicephale
join:2005-09-24
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
| The SpeedTouch "BootP Reset" recovery procedure
Switch to Static IP | 
Configure 'TFTPD32' | 
Wait for completion! |
I invite you to read further if you happen to be a
SpeedTouch owner or you intend to be. The present
post is to make sure you've been made aware of the
BootP Reset prodedure in case you might need it as
a last resort. Be advised that no FirmWare update
is garanteed to be 100 % fail-safe, though: a lot
of average consumer-class products including quite
a few business-class series depend on a BootLoader
which resides on a single FLASH chip and hence the
risk of an incident remains even if a manufacturer
made this critical process sturdy enough. Thomson
worked hard to protect the BootLoader code and few
complaints emerged about it but you still expose a
SpeedTouch device to potential damage when you try
a different FirmWare... The BootP Reset technique
will reveal fatal failure in unresponsive devices,
once you've reached this level there's no hope for
revival other than using proper maintenance tools.
Now that everyone has been warned, lets begin with
the preliminaries. First of all, disable SoftWare
FireWall and Anti-Virus applications and by this i
mean just shut down even the least active parts or
take full responsability for inconveniencies! The
next step is to remove every single device between
your SpeedTouch and the PC since even a switch may
interfere (tolerate no router). At that point, it
is time to set the PC's IP address to a static one
that the SpeedTouch (which stands at 10.0.0.138 by
default) will be able to reach: 10.0.0.1 is OKay.
If you haven't got a copy of 'TFTPD32' yet then it
is about time! Read the original article while at
it... This utility must be located in a directory
that's as close to the root as possible; copy the
FirmWare file in that very same directory and take
care to remove any fantasy in its FileName: don't
gamble by leaving extraneous dots, etc. With your
SpeedTouch power turned off, run 'TFTPD32' to fill
the "DHCP server" tab as shown and click [Save]...
You're ready to launch the BootP mode. Press your
SpeedTouch's Reset button with its power still off
and hold it down firmly for about 15 seconds while
you're powering it. Once it has finished booting,
its "Power" and "Ethernet" LEDs will change colour
between red and green in alternance. DO NOT TOUCH
ANYTHING UNTIL the UpLoad is complete and the LEDs
are solid green. FirmWare transfer lasts for less
than ten seconds, this is short but real critical.
Your SpeedTouch will have DHCP support ready after
a fresh install. Return the PC to dynamic address
mode if you like then access the the GUI which will be
waiting to launch Thomson's 'Easy Setup' applet...
The users who are used to run 'DMT' with the older
SpeedTouch FirmWare may be informed that Thomson's
late v6.2 versions disabled it by design. A newer
3rd-party tool has been released to account for it
and it's called 'SpeedTouch ModemTool v0.6', there
are no tweaks as before but we still get snapshots
of the spectrographic response and statistics show
up on a separate tab; it's in dynamic development
so it's the right time to congratulate the author!
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