One of those things I'd love to get some eyes on, especially as mine seems to he having troubles.
I got mine from the always lovely Joe of Joe's Computer Museum, and it worked great for a long while! Until as of recently it began giving some of my retro systems issues, seemingly with EDID things (and seemingly being unable to pass 1024x768 and lower video through to my HDMI monitor correctly). My 98 machine with an ATI video card would get stuck at 640x480 and Windows wouldn't let me change the resolution (though if I connected it directly to my monitor it worked as it should). My Mac mini (also with an ATI card) would just flat out refuse to support anything lower than 1280x1024 while connected to the Extron.
Already was on the latest firmware so I decided to do a configuration reset (which fixed nothing) and finally a firmware reset (which is supposed to factory reset the unit and roll it back to the original firmware, 1.07, which it did). However, this seems to have left the 300A in a semi-working state. I get no video output from it now., though judging by the LED on the front it does turn green when a video source is connected so it can see video coming in. Just no output. I did make sure the HDMI path is working (connected my laptop to the HDMI going to my monitor and capture card and got image) which leaves this at something being wrong with the 300A unit itself. Feh.
Unfortunately the serial cable I made for it broke and I don't have any handy systems with a serial port handy so I had to order a 3-pin (3.81mm pitch) phoenix connector and a USB serial adapter and am waiting for that now, in hopes that I can serial in and maybe re-do the firmware that way.
But because Amazon decided to default those deliveries to coincide with a delayed delivery, I won't be getting those for several more days. Grrrrrr.
In the meantime I decided to tear open my 300A and see if I could locate the flash ROM in case I had to go nuclear on this poor thing, and to also get a dump of it before I went monkeying around. Some protips if you take yours apart:
1. The screws are soft, and strip easily. Be careful.
2. The screws on the interior are brittle. I tried to unscrew one and it straight up broke.
3. There is a two-inch or so strip of metal adhered to the rear edge of the interior. This bit of metal is very sharp. Ask me how I know. Beware.
Thankfully the flash chip I'm looking for is easy enough to find and mess with in situ. If the 300a's dials and buttons are facing you, it's to the left:
There are two EEPROMs here, the firmware chip is a 1MB chip, the one highlighted in blue is a 32K chip. I posted this on the TD discord and Techknight theorizes that the smaller chip is where the config data is stored,. I've not dumped this yet though I probably should have, oops.
I'm not sharing the dumps just yet because I don't know if they're serialized in some way. I hope to experiment with this soon.
However, what I can tell you is that while Extron's "installers" (that they're very secretive about, apparently) for their firmware upgrades just drop a .bin file on your disk (which is nice, I can feed that right into my programmer), it doesn't seem to be complete, or Extron's Firmware Loader does something in the process of loading them, because 1. the .bin files are noticeably smaller than the flash chip, and 2. When doing a raw flash to the chip, the unit goes into what appears to be a no-power state. No lights, no action whatsoever. If I reflash the dumped ROM, it comes back to life (albeit still with no display).
At this point I do have someone willing to take a dump of their 300A so I have a known good dump to work with and see if that affects anything, and I do also plan to try going the serial route too. But if anyone has any other advice to offer in this situation, or troubleshooting steps that really should be documented, please, please post them. Google has been utterly useless when trying to research and troubleshoot. Probably no doubt due to again, Extron really not intending for lowly end users like myself to be mucking about with this equipment.
I got mine from the always lovely Joe of Joe's Computer Museum, and it worked great for a long while! Until as of recently it began giving some of my retro systems issues, seemingly with EDID things (and seemingly being unable to pass 1024x768 and lower video through to my HDMI monitor correctly). My 98 machine with an ATI video card would get stuck at 640x480 and Windows wouldn't let me change the resolution (though if I connected it directly to my monitor it worked as it should). My Mac mini (also with an ATI card) would just flat out refuse to support anything lower than 1280x1024 while connected to the Extron.
Already was on the latest firmware so I decided to do a configuration reset (which fixed nothing) and finally a firmware reset (which is supposed to factory reset the unit and roll it back to the original firmware, 1.07, which it did). However, this seems to have left the 300A in a semi-working state. I get no video output from it now., though judging by the LED on the front it does turn green when a video source is connected so it can see video coming in. Just no output. I did make sure the HDMI path is working (connected my laptop to the HDMI going to my monitor and capture card and got image) which leaves this at something being wrong with the 300A unit itself. Feh.
Unfortunately the serial cable I made for it broke and I don't have any handy systems with a serial port handy so I had to order a 3-pin (3.81mm pitch) phoenix connector and a USB serial adapter and am waiting for that now, in hopes that I can serial in and maybe re-do the firmware that way.
But because Amazon decided to default those deliveries to coincide with a delayed delivery, I won't be getting those for several more days. Grrrrrr.
In the meantime I decided to tear open my 300A and see if I could locate the flash ROM in case I had to go nuclear on this poor thing, and to also get a dump of it before I went monkeying around. Some protips if you take yours apart:
1. The screws are soft, and strip easily. Be careful.
2. The screws on the interior are brittle. I tried to unscrew one and it straight up broke.
3. There is a two-inch or so strip of metal adhered to the rear edge of the interior. This bit of metal is very sharp. Ask me how I know. Beware.
Thankfully the flash chip I'm looking for is easy enough to find and mess with in situ. If the 300a's dials and buttons are facing you, it's to the left:
There are two EEPROMs here, the firmware chip is a 1MB chip, the one highlighted in blue is a 32K chip. I posted this on the TD discord and Techknight theorizes that the smaller chip is where the config data is stored,. I've not dumped this yet though I probably should have, oops.
I'm not sharing the dumps just yet because I don't know if they're serialized in some way. I hope to experiment with this soon.
However, what I can tell you is that while Extron's "installers" (that they're very secretive about, apparently) for their firmware upgrades just drop a .bin file on your disk (which is nice, I can feed that right into my programmer), it doesn't seem to be complete, or Extron's Firmware Loader does something in the process of loading them, because 1. the .bin files are noticeably smaller than the flash chip, and 2. When doing a raw flash to the chip, the unit goes into what appears to be a no-power state. No lights, no action whatsoever. If I reflash the dumped ROM, it comes back to life (albeit still with no display).
At this point I do have someone willing to take a dump of their 300A so I have a known good dump to work with and see if that affects anything, and I do also plan to try going the serial route too. But if anyone has any other advice to offer in this situation, or troubleshooting steps that really should be documented, please, please post them. Google has been utterly useless when trying to research and troubleshoot. Probably no doubt due to again, Extron really not intending for lowly end users like myself to be mucking about with this equipment.
