Originally Posted by Sherif' date='Jul 11 2005, 04:23 PM

Folks,

Went in today to have software updated along with a faulty air valve for the brakes. I had this funny problem with the brakes not functioning on startup during very hot weather. Turns out this is a known fault and needs valve replacement alon with recoding.

I sat down with my SA and he explained things very clearly to me. Mind you, I am a computer engineer and always very suspicious of people trying to explain simple IT basics to me but this guy knew his stuff very well.

As many people have already explained in the past the version number is a package that includes the firmwares and upates for ALL BMW vehicles. Hence a version might increase but hold no new software for our E60 and same for all other cars.

Now comes the tricky part...

Many people have complained of loosing some functionality with updates and upgrades. The reason for this is that the update package might have pre-requisite firmware levels from some components and hence cross them out. The update also has 2 segments 1 for IBUS and one for MOST. Hence DME, ABS, ASC, EGS etc get updated in the IBUS phase. The MOST phase does the phone, entertainment, Idrive etc.....

Now let's look at my case .. I took the car in for a complete update. They only did the IBUS phase, so now my transmission and engine related control units are on the latest revision. As for the MOST phase, they skipped that today. Reason being they found out that my Idrive display firmware is not up to the level required by the contents of V18. They have one of two options, do what they did today and skip this phase for now or replace the Idrive display. Ofcourse I screamed bloody murder thinking my display is OBSOLETE. That's when they let the cat out of the bag with V18.1 comes a firmware upgrade for the older displays. V18.1 is expected in 10 days.

Apparantly there is a check phase at the beginning of recoding. That helps them identify if all the firmwares of the individual components are up to a level that allows recoding. The dealers that have had problems "frying control units" etc.. simply skipped that phase and hence had a control unit with a firmware on it that was incompatible with the rest of the system.

This makes lots of sense CIP is just a box full of updates for the different control units. If one of your control units does not meet the requirements and the engineer DOES NOT READ THE RELEASE NOTES or makes sure all exisiting components meet the requirements then you end up with a busted upgrade!!!

I believe that is why some people have had major problems with upgrades at some dealers while others have not.

So right now my IBUS portion of the car is on V18 and the rest is on V16.1. Within 10 days they will upgrade verything to V18.1 if there are any changes to the IBUS portion or just go ahead and upgrade the MOST portion only since the IBUS will already be at the most recent level.

I asked a sneaky question anout how long would that take and got told the MOST phase is usually very quick since this is a high speed bus, while the IBUS takes a lot longer since it is a lot slower as a communciations bus!!

Hope this explains it ....

Enjoy

./sherif

Originally Posted by JDN' date='Jul 12 2005, 12:30 AM

So that's how I lost 46 days in the shop! :|