Analogue-sequencer

Hi Gene, 

> I'm confused now. Wasn't there a bootloader update a few 
> months ago, and
> this is the second one?

There was a bootloader update T89-3.0, which modified the bootloader so the
same main program would run on both old and new CPUs.
The new CPU needs to have the bootloader at the very bottom of code memory,
while the old CPU was happy with it anywhere, so I had located it (by
default) at the top.
The bootloader update was actually in the form of a new main program update
- since the main program got loaded at the start of code memory, it was
fairly simple to load the new bootloader as a main program, with a little
bit extra code added to re-configure the CPU to boot from there instead of
the old bootloader.

Then I got the official sysex ID so I released a sysex ID patch for
bootloaders that had already been upgraded to 3.0, and replaced the 3.0
bootloader with the 3.1 bootloader update. 3.1 included the new sysex ID, so
it was only a 1 step update for those who hadn't already applied the 3.0
bootloader.
I can see why that might be confusing...

> In any case, even if it doesn't do 
> anything useful,
> how do I now boot up the p3? Shouldn't a redundant update of 
> the bootloader
> be harmless?

It is harmless, but since the new bootloader loads the bootloader update as
if it were a main program, a second copy of the bootloader will be installed
where the main program should be.
If you try to boot this, it gets stuck in a 'Firmware check...' loop,
because it does the firmware check, then boots the main program. but the
first thing the main program does is to reset the firmware check address
pointer and jump back to the firmware check code.
I did think of putting some code into the bootloader to detect if this was
attempted, but that would have pushed it into the next page of code memory,
losing code space that would otherwise be useable by the main program.

> Got BAD DATA message with midiOX.

Maybe with the confusion around the different bootloader updates, you've
actually got the T89-3.0 release on there ?
In that case, try the sysex ID patch, and see if midiOX will load that.
If it loads and runs, then retry the current image.
That's the last explanation I cna think of, let's hope it works...

Cheers,
Colin f