geniusintraining
Lifetime Supporting Member + Moderator
Based on my previous "life" I can say that there are two potential warnings about flashing very old ENBTs (and other older modules):
- flash memory is degrading with time. After 15-20 years it may easily fail Erase cycle and will never accept new flash.
- older modules, including ENBT, don't use a bootloader (like all newer modules). If flash fails for some reason, there is no way to restart it again and module will be bricked.
Not debating with the experts.... but just stating my experiences that I have had, I would say I have flashed 100-200 ENBT's and never had a issue with any of them, I flash them to the newest version so when my end customer gets it they do not need to worry about flashing them, that said... I have bricked 1 1785-L40e/e and 1 1785-L80e/e bringing them from early to K.3, but K.3 is needed by some customers, not sure but I think it has to do with messaging that only is supported with k.3.
I flash a couple 5/05's a week and only bricked one... I have had a couple that failed and needed to be rebooted and flashed again and the one brick was being flashed and a thunderstorm rolled in and the power dropped out on the second part of the flash, I look at the weather before flashing now I think I corrupted the firmware.