Firmware for MJ Tetrad.. Help! I bricked it!

[Jayakumar, R]

I don't like the Bio-Rad people at all. Their equipments are lousy and
so is their technical support.  I nowadays buy all our stuff from other
companies like Bio-Tek (great equipments) and others.  What better way
to make money than to put up a vague firmware support and missle people
into installing it and then charge money for repairing the damage.  
   I am sure that it just cleared the BIOS.  A good computer tech should
be able to do it. Or you can just get a run down MJ research cycler (I
doubt it, since MJ Research people made some of the best PCR machines I
have ever used), and scavenge it for the BIOS chip. 

Jay


-----Original Message-----
From: methods-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu
[mailto:methods-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu] On Behalf Of emschaub
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 5:50 PM
To: methods from magpie.bio.indiana.edu
Subject: Firmware for MJ Tetrad.. Help! I bricked it!

So, I'm new, but am frantically trying to find a solution since I
bricked our MJ Research Tetrad!

I was at Biorad website and saw there was a firmware upgrade, and
figured that I'd be a good customer and upgrade our machine just in case
there were some bugs that we haven't found. Typically this is a good
policy for just about all computer equipment I've ever owned...
until now.

So, I download it and run the upgrade utility on a computer via the
serial cable. The utility goes through 95% of the way, formats, starts
to install, and then makes it all the way to the end before it tells me
that our hardware is too old and incompatible with this firmware
upgrade. No warning, nothing in the instructions, nothing on the website
that we had obsolete equipment for the firmware until this. So now it's
a major paper weight. Anyone have any idea? I already called Biorad and
they are saying it's our fault and want $3,000 for a service call (not
including equipment replacement) and say they need to replace the
motherboard. When I turn on the machine it just says that it's missing
software and needs service. So, I think all we need is the old firmware
and a method of getting it on the machine and things would be fine.

Anyone have any ideas or any leads on anything that might be helpful?
I wish I could find someone who actually wrote the firmware. I haven't
been very happy with Biorad--technical support is lacking. We received a
somewhat mean voicemail from them yesterday.

Eric
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