Ok, I'm sincerely sorry I was too blunt for what you like. I'm trying to not be so blunt but sometimes I fail from time to time. I'll never be a diplomat
and maybe I'm socially defunct...
But I do standby my opinions and if you care to discuss the topic in a not-so-bashing manor I will try too. Otherwise you won't see me again on this topic.
There appears to be an underlying tone that you may be nice and very helpful people here even though you gave me lots of grief over my opinions, so I'll try one more time at this forum.
As for my case specifically, I tried to do a backup before the upgrade of the firmware in my 9XR using Companion9x. Nothing super obvious told me it was unsuccessful. On the contrary I checked and saw data being written to my harddrive that appeared to be a non-empty backup. Since I couldn't find a way to verify it short of flashing it back it was a leap of faith I had to make, that the backup was good. I think that's the most that could be expected of me as an average novice user. Sure I
could have done more, but would you expect all users to do more? If there is a manual or FAQ describing my scenario I managed to miss it. You are better equipped than me to know what kind of info you provide before the first use of Companion9x, but if something clear exist I still managed to miss it.
It's quite possible I misunderstood something that was happening but please understand I'm totally new, as in NOOB, to flashing firmwares in the R/C world and had no idea about the risks involved. Bashing me doesn't teach me anything, it just creates resentments. The installer or the first run of the program didn't give me all (or hardly any) of the risks ShowMaster explained so thoroughly a few posts back. I wasn't quite interested in spending days or weeks reading up on everything, I just wanted to make a backup and then flash another firmware on the radio to try out. I don't remember what research I did before attempting this but should I really have to do research before I use Companion9x? I did watch
this video but it wasn't clear what state the 9XR was in before he started. Having heard or read nothing about the read-protection by HobbyKing I assumed Companion9x would guide me as necessary. I think it's fair to believe I may have done at least about average research before using Companion9x.
My main concern was wether Companion9x can detect that the rom is read-protected by the apparently evil HobbyKing developers or not. If it can, I think it would be very fair to make some kind of super obvious warning to the novice user like me that any attempted backups will not work even though something will be written to disk. After all, Companion9x is hopefully created to assist the user - even if HobbyKing has done something bad. And I should think 90% or more of the 9XRs are sold by HobbyKing so this may be a somewhat common scenario.
And no, the models lost aren't the end of the world, but can you really blame me for being upset when some of you got quite upset at my feedback? I lost many hours of setup (most notably an intensive day of
thorough DLG setup) and you lost a minute or two from reading my post. I don't want to have a heated discussion on whose fault the lost models are, so please don't bring that up if you don't feel it's absolutely necessary. I respect your opinion but it's not actuall what I wanted to discuss.
Also note that I found this thread through Google (
after my problem) and knew nothing more about what your community is like before posting. Everyone has to start somewhere.
On the plus side
I'm sincerely impressed that there are a number of people here that care deeply for Companion9x and I have now successfully subscribed to the thread, which I failed to do when I originally posted. I will discuss a bit further if necessary, even though it's really past any possible help for me.
I'm really just discussing this so other people will have less risk of making the same mistake I did. I'm freely supplying my feedback about my experience using Companion9x, to perhaps help improving it, just as freely as you all contribute in various ways, but I didn't exactly feel that it was appreciated. That was the original idea behind my first post as well but I didn't want to be as long-winded as this.
