Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory

Transcription

1 Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory

2 The following document contains a Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory Mainpine, Inc. All rights reserved. The information in this document represents the current views of Mainpine, Inc. Due to changing market conditions, this information should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Mainpine and Mainpine cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This document is for informational purposes only. MAINPINE MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT. RockForce, IQ Express, IQFSP, and Mainpine are either trademarks of or registered trademarks of Mainpine, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Mainpine, Inc. PO Box 241, Wilsonville, Oregon, , USA. 1 st June 2009 Issue 1 Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory Page 2 of 7

3 Introduction... 4 Simple Test to Detect Failed Boards... 5 Firmware Update... 6 List of Covered Products... 7 Issue 1 Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory Page 3 of 7

4 Introduction This Product Advisory is intended to alert all customers of a potential issue with IQ Express firmware released prior to version (1 st April 2009). We believe that there is an overall increased risk that IQ Express boards produced between April 2007 and April 2009 may fail prematurely when in use. Firmware prior to version has a ~200ms vulnerability where a modem may begin to go off hook in response to an ATA command before the DAA status bits have detected a ring condition on the line. During this vulnerability, power transistors Q104, Q204, Q304, and Q404, may be exposed to ring voltages that damage the device and lead to a partial short circuit between the Collector and Emitter. Boards that have developed this power transistor fault can no longer dial out and will always return a Busy or No Answer status. Additionally, no fax tones will be heard when an external call is answered by the modem in Fax Service Class 1. A simple test has been developed to detect this failure and is described in detail below. Our warranty and service records have not seen any noticeable increase in failure rates in the IQ Express products. Nevertheless, because there is an increased risk we strongly recommend that all customers update to the firmware immediately. A simple firmware update process is described in detail below. Mainpine production has already switched to the firmware and we expect the supply chain to be free of prior firmware versions in three to six months time. We unreservedly apologize for any inconvenience caused by this notification and will endeavor to assist all customers with the upgrade process. This notice neither invalidates nor extends your normal warranty. Please find below a list of products that are covered by this notification. Yours sincerely Kevin Sharpe Mainpine, Inc. President & CTO Issue 1 Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory Page 4 of 7

5 Simple Test to Detect Failed Boards To detect the transistor failure, you will require a terminal program to communicate directly with each modem on the board. The most popular Windows terminal program is HyperTerminal which is included in most versions of the operating system. Check for the HyperTerminal installation by going to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Communications. If HyperTerminal is there, you can click on it to start the test process. If it is not there, go to the Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. Go to Add/Remove Windows Components. Go to Accessories and Utilities > Communications, and click the box for HyperTerminal. Click OK twice, and click Next to start the installation. This may require the Windows operating system CD or DVD. Click Finish to complete the installation. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Communications > HyperTerminal. A New Connection box will appear. Type anything into the Name box, and click OK. At the Connect To screen, click the drop down next to Connect Using, and select one of the COM ports that a IQ Express Fax Modem is attached to. (Do not select any of the IQ Express Fax Modems) Click OK. A COM Port Properties screen will appear. Click OK again. There should now be a blank white terminal screen. Type ATZ and hit Enter. Even though you may not see the ATZ on screen, you should get an OK response. Now you will be able to see what you are typing on screen. ATI3 <Enter> will display the firmware version of the IQ Express port. Make a note of the firmware number displayed. AT+fclass=1 <Enter> will switch the port into Fax Service Class 1 mode. Try calling out to your cell phone or a nearby voice phone using the command ATDT(fax number) <Enter>. Example: To call , you would use ATDT <Enter>. Make sure to also enter any dialing prefixes, such as if you need a 9 to access an outside line. Your cell phone or voice phone should ring if the port is working. When you answer the call, you should hear a beeping sound on the line. Go ahead and hang up your phone. Use the command ATH <Enter> to end the outbound call. If the port is able to dial out, then the port does not have the transistor failure mentioned in this Product Advisory. If the board cannot dial out, it is still not certain if the port does have the failure. The next required test would be to check for fax tones on the port after answering an inbound call. To check if the port is still in fax mode, use the command AT+fclass? <Enter>. You should get a 1 response. Using your cell phone or voice phone, call the fax number of the fax line that is attached to the same COM port that you have opened with HyperTerminal. You should hear ringing on the line, and you should also see a RING on screen each time it rings. If you do not see RING messages on screen, you are calling the wrong fax line or there is a fax line problem. When you see RING(s), use ATA <Enter> to answer the inbound call. Through your cell phone or voice phone, you should then hear the high pitched screeching sounds of fax communication. If you hear this noise on the line, the port does not have the failure. After about 10 seconds you will get an Error message on screen which is normal. Use ATH <Enter> to end the call. If you do not hear anything on the line after answering the call with ATA <Enter>, that is an indication of the transistor failure. Repeat the test again by checking the fax mode (AT+fclass? <Enter>) and then call the line again. After seeing RING on screen, use ATA <Enter> to answer the call. If you still do not hear any fax sounds on the line, this does indicate that the port could have a transistor failure. If you suspect a hardware failure, please contact Mainpine Technical Support by sending an to support@mainpine.com. This will open a new support case, and Mainpine Support will respond quickly to help resolve the problem. Issue 1 Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory Page 5 of 7

6 Firmware Update To update each port of the IQ Express fax board to the version of the firmware, follow these steps: Open a web browser, and browse to this location to download the firmware: Download this.zip file, and unzip it into a folder on the same machine with the IQ Express fax board. Go to Start > Run. Type in services.msc and click OK. Stop the service called Fax, or any other fax programs that are running in the background. In the folder that you unzipped the downloaded files into, double-click the file iqflash.exe. A screen will appear for you to select a.hex file. Select the file mainpine_cfax34_81201.hex, and click Open. A Flash Loader screen should appear, and a list of the COM ports. Each port of the Mainpine IQ Express board should take about 1 to 2 minutes to update. Once each port completes the upgrade, the status next to that port will be Updated. After all the ports are done updating, a Flash Programming Completed screen will appear. Click OK to complete the update. Do not cancel or interrupt the flash process. Doing so may damage the board firmware. It is possible the COM port numbers for the IQ Express fax board may be outside the default range that the iqflash program checks. It is also possible that the iqflash may have a problem initializing a port and the port may be skipped. In this case, you can create a shortcut to the iqflash.exe file, and edit the command line parameters. Here is how that is done: Right-click on the iqflash.exe file, and go to Create Shortcut. A new file will appear called Shortcut to iqflash.exe. Right-click on Shortcut to iqflash.exe, and go to Properties. The target line should end with iqflash.exe. After the last quote mark, put a space and then the COM port number that you would like to start the update on. Then you would put a space, and then the number of ports beyond that port to continue to update. For example, if you wanted to update port 7, and only that port, it would be iqflash.exe 7 1. Click OK to save the changes. Double-click the Shortcut to iqflash.exe. Select the file mainpine_cfax34_81201.hex, and click Open. It will then update the COM port you specified in the command line, and also the number of ports that you selected in the second command line parameter. If you have any problem with the firmware update, please contact Mainpine Technical Support by sending an to support@mainpine.com. This will open a new support case, and Mainpine Support will respond quickly to help resolve the problem. Issue 1 Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory Page 6 of 7

7 List of Covered Products Part Number RF2117 RF2118 RF2119 RF2120 RF2121 RF2122 RF2123 RF2124 RF3118 RF3120 RF3122 RF3124 RF5118 RF5120 RF5122 RF5124 Description IQ Express 1-Port Low Profile IQ Express 1-Port Standard Profile IQ Express 2-Port Low Profile IQ Express 2-Port Standard Profile IQ Express 4-Port Low Profile IQ Express 4-Port Standard Profile IQ Express 8-Port Low Profile IQ Express 8-Port Standard Profile IQ Express 1-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) IQ Express 2-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) IQ Express 4-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) IQ Express 8-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) IQ Express 1-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) IQ Express 2-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) IQ Express 4-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) IQ Express 8-Port Standard Profile (includes Low Profile Bracket) Issue 1 Mainpine IQ Express Product Advisory Page 7 of 7