Updating Davis VP2 Firmware

[gb509]

Hi and Happy New year to All.

I had been planning a HD change on my trustiMac as I was running critically low on available diskspace ( strange on how small 1TB is these days). So change my iMac HD to 4TB Seagate and this went smoothly, the resort from Time Machine will however take many hours!!

As I needed a new Silabs driver I thought I had better check the current version is indeed  OS X VCP Driver 3.1 from DEC 6 2012?
Secondly check my console firmware which turned out to be version 1.90 English. I am aware that there is no direct PC installer for Firmware for OS X but has anyone had experience doing this with Parallels and windows version ( I have W7) and if so does the USB Cataloguer work?

Thanks in advance

Gerard

[wurzelmac]

Hello Gerard,

no experience with Parallels, but I done it with an old Windows Laptop:
http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=1442.msg12098#msg12098

Maybe anyone of your friends has a Windows machine to borrow for a few minutes.

Cheers,
Reinhard

[gb509]

Hi Reinhard,

Thanks for the tip bad news is all friends and family have been 'converted' so windows machines are a bit thin on ground these days. I liked at some older threads I may try my wife's MacBook it has Parallels and W& as well as XP and see what happens.
From what I have read as long as Windows sees the correct com port it should work although I am mindful of the motto 'if it aint broken don't fix it' but 1.90 is pretty old.

I'll post my results if it works

Cheers

Gerard

[LesCimes]

I'll be interested in how this works for you as well. I was avoiding updating my firmware but did consider using VMFusion which is on my Mac. Should work. I just haven't been brave enough to try it unless I have plenty of time to fix it. You might be able to go to a local computer store or even a library and use a PC there. Keep us posted.

[gb509]

Upgraded Console Firmware VP2 from 1.90 to 3.15 without any problems 
Procedure:
1)Shutdown WC on Mac.
2) open W7 on Parallels.
3)go to www.silabs.com and download appropiate VCP-UART driver for Windows system W7 has version 6.7A to a folder.
4) you need to choose 1 out of 2 installers (x86 is for 32 bit and x64 is for 64bit version of OS) Mine was x64.
5) Run VCP driver installer.

6) Download from Davis Firmware installer for Direct PC and run software.
7) You will get a window in which you specify your connection>USB
Click Start you will see confirmation of your current console firmware version and usual warnings not to disconnect etc.
9) Process takes a couple of minutes only and Console reboots.
10) you can check FW version by pressing HOLD and pressing + together FW is displayed in ticker bar

DONE! painless and no errors 

[wurzelmac]

Congrats!

Cheers,
Reinhard

[LesCimes]

Wow, that was quick. Great to hear it works. Just to verify, because I did it wrong once and had to call tech help, etc. to fix it. You said the connection option is USB. I think I must have chosen "serial" when I did it before. Then my VP2 wouldn't work on my Mac. Well, I may get brave and try it when I get a block of time.

By the way, any noticeable improvement in the operation of the VP2? (Probably nothing obvious. ??)