Updated Extinstall - what would you like to see

[unclemiltie]

Update: 8/3/07

I've uploaded a new version of Extinstall-2 that implements the following:

1: supports $FF section terminators. Will allso fill empty memory with the opposite of the section terminator to allow easy location of unused memory.

2: supports LONG format Advance codes used in some of the newer remotes. Will translate between Advance code formats when the extender is different than the base remote (ie: URC-6131)

3: preliminary support for JP1.x extenders by supporting the BaseAddress specified in the RDF. To use this you will have to use the

Code: Select all

 -signature=$xxxx 

command to specifiy where in the IR or HEX file the signature is located. This MUST be the last item on the command line, ie:

Code: Select all

 extinstall-2 hexfile inputfile outputfile -signature=EC00 

4: copies and merges comments from the HEX and IR file into the output file.

The download is in the diagnosis area here until I get a sense that people are not having issues with the software.

https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=4859



Original Post:

I'm going to try to tackle updating Extinstall. John sent me the source code, I finally got my Visual Studio up and running again and a version of the source that will compile and deliver the same results as the old version did.

My hit parade right now is:

1: deal with the $FF section terminator in the newer remotes
2: deal with the LONG advance code format
3: possibly deal with keeping the comments in the input IR file if I can keep them in sync with the merged IR file.
4: make extinstall work for a JP1.x remote (since there are people working on extenders for those)

Any other suggesitons while I'm in there under the hood?


BTW, I *THINK that dealing with the LONG advance code format will allow Extinstall to insert the extender into a remote that has the LONG format even though the extender does not use that format (ie: URC-6131) Should that be a design goal? I don't think it'll be too hard.

[unclemiltie]

Question for the experts:

Extinstall currently fills any unused EEPROM with $FF. Since I'm going to the trouble of knowing the difference between $00 terminated lists and $FF terminated lists, should I fill with the SectionTerminator?

IR doesn't seem to care as long as the lists are terminated correctly, but maybe I'm missing something.


-bill

[johnsfine]

I prefer filling unused areas with FF regardless of the SectionTerminator value.

[The Robman]

From a practical POV, it doesn't matter whether you fill with FFs or 00s, but from a validation POV, I would have thought that you would want to fill with the opposite value.

As you may know, IR has a feature that will fill the entire EEPROM with FFs, so that you can then do a 981 reset to get what we call a "virgin" image. Once the remotes with FF terminators showed up, we had to add a 2nd feature that would fill the remote with 00s, so we could see the terminators.

So, my vote would be to fill with the opposite value, but I'm not opposed to going the other way.

[unclemiltie]

Rob

I like your suggestion, that way it is very clear what is used and what is not.


thanks

[unclemiltie]

I've uploaded a trial version that implements support for SectionTerminator=&FF, AdvCodeBindType=LONG and "transcoding" between the two AdvCodeBindTypes.

This version DOES NOT support JP1.x extenders. That's a much bigger undertaking than this quick fix, andI'm working on it.

the file is here:

https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=4859

As always, be kind. I'm still new to this C++ stuff and John's code was a stretch to my limited C++ knowledge. (there are still things in there that I don't yet understand, but I didn't need to touch that so I didn't care!)

If you find a bug please let me know. I'll need the input IR file, the hex IR file and the "correct" results from the old version of Extinstall so that I can see what I did wrong.



-bill

[joedaring]

Hellò Bill..

I'm keeping an eye on this thread...

Is this version OK for use with your 9960 B01 Extender ?

Do I need anything else to try and use it?

Thanks Bill... have a nice weekend

Pippo "Joe"

[unclemiltie]

Joe

yes, in fact this version was done BECAUSE I wanted to use Extinstall with the 9960B01 extender.

The only thing you would need is the HEX version of the extender to allow you to install the extender into your existing configuration. I've just uploaded a new version of the 9960B01 and 6960B00 extender that includes the hex files.

The new distribution is here:

https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=4813

[ElizabethD]

Wow, cool project, thanks for working on it
Looking forward to preseve the NOTES.

I used this file
https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=4859
not the one in the post above.

I get IR error big red X.

System Error. Code: 14001.
The application failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

In case I messed up, here's what I did.
1. Unzipped extinstall-2 and put it in the same directory where IR is, and set path to IR just in case.
2. Opened standard, unextended, old, IR file from another directory.
3. Asked to merge extender hex file from still another directory (yeah, they're all over the place in case that matters)
4. Entered filename for saving the merged file in the same directory where hex file is, hit enter and got the error.

Same result on 8910, 6131(has funny keymoves), 7800. All jp1.
Am I messing up something?
What application config isn't right?

[unclemiltie]

I haven't tried it from within IR yet can you do me a favor and run it from a DOS prompt (C:> extinstall hexfile input.ir output.ir) and tell me what happens?

maybe I did something to the file that broke the compatibility with IR.


-bill

(PS. I'm now reading comments and keeping track of them, next is getting them back in the merge. If I can ever get some time to work on it!)

[joedaring]

Hi Bill,
Same error as Elizabeth here..

Tried to run from dos, and doesn't work either...

When running from dos the error message says, more or less (MSG is in Italian on my system) "Cannot run specified program"

Looking forward to your fix!

Now for a weird thing I would like to try...

Can this extinstall method work for merging the NEW 1.03 .hex extender file into my previous EXTENDED 1.01 .ir file I've been using so far?

Or should I bite the bullet and do everything again for this time?

Ciao Bill, thanks for your efforts!
Pippo

[unclemiltie]

I wonder if I have an issue with some form of the Visual C redistributable libraries that are required for MFC applications? I'm not an expert in this area and (funny enough) don't have a system here that doesn't have Visual Studio on it so I can't make this happen. hmmm, I'm going to have to look into this. Let me see if I can boot my work laptop to the "corporate issued" partition which doesn't have studio on it and see what happens.


as for Joe's question: This should allow you to install the extender into an existing extended 9960B01 remote. The syntax is the same, ie:

Extinstall 9960ext.hex 9960-old.ir 9960-new.ir


The way that Extinstall works is that it opens the files, searches through them for all of the keymoves, macros, etc and then if it is installing into an extender file it will then take all of the keymoves, macros, devices, protocols from the "old" configuration and insert them into the extender file. (taking into account duplicates of course) So you'll end up with the new extender with all of your old configuration info in it.


-bill

[joedaring]

Hi Bill,
thanks for the explanation.. just one doubt... does the different RDFs between extenders' version cause any trouble?

I see your latest distribution includes new RDFs to take into account the different memory allocations etc...

Of course I'll have to wait until you fix your Extinstall to try and use the tool, as I get the same error that Elizabeth describes...

But there's no hurry!

Thanks and ciao!

Pippo

[ElizabethD]

From cmd it wouldn't work for me either
extinstall 8910ex1.hex 8910-IR-beforeExtender.IR 8910-viaNewExtinstall.IR
Error was "The system cannot execute the specified program."
I ran sysinternals FileMon - no errors
I ran sysinternals ProcMon - all sort of information there, well beyond my skills,
so I filtered the trace for just this process and upladed as CSV file which opens in Excel. Perhaps some clues there. I just don't know what are normal Windows errors and what are relevant. Fast IO, things not found in the registry, etc.
https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=4868
I have admin rights. It's XP-home.

[unclemiltie]

I've successfully made this version work on a machine that did not have the build environment installed. Since I'm using Visual Studio 2005 (VC++ 8) you need the VS 8 run time libraries from Microsoft. Most people probably only have the VS 6 and VS 7 runtimes installed.

you can get the download from Microsoft here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en


it's 2.6MB, download and install and this version of Extinstall should work. I'll probably post another one tonight that I've fixed a few things AND this version at least ignores the [notes] section (but doesn't process it yet) so that you don't have to edit your IR file.


in the mean time, pound away on the version that I posted the other day!


THANKS to Vickyg for finding the answer to this for me!