I killed my K100d!...advise please.

They're packing it into the camera so it will be tiny tiny. The chip will probably be soldered on or SMD (surface mount device). Once in place unless designed in from scratch it will not be maintainable.

Cheaper to replace than repair. Just in time costs. £30 per hour. 30 mins to unpack, 30 mins to repair, 60 mins to repack. = £60 in labour alone.

Slightly off topic, but heres a question;

If the mains power fails when upgrading firmware will the batteries automatically take over without interuption?

If not then (IMHO) using mains is a very bad idea, we all know from experience that the mains can and does fail without notice, especially with modern day consumer units with circuit breakers.

Now that would make interesting reading on an insurance claim "the kettle fused and broke my camera"

Probably this feature is encapsulated into a small chip costing a couple of quid. But how many people need this? So why increase costs of production for a Rolls Royce feature.



Looking at the instructions included with the K-7 firmware.

No mention of mains.
It does say.
2. Insert the D-LI90 battery into the camera and confirm the battery is full by battery level indicator then turn the camera off.

7. "UPDATING" appears on the LCD monitor and updating starts.
Please do not under any circumstances switch off the power before the update is completed. It will take approximately 90 seconds to complete update.

So the risk involved is for 90 seconds that your battery will fail. Its rare and bad, bad luck. The warnings are clear in the .TXT and as a serial offender of non-RTFM I commiserate.

Here's in interesting site

http://www.pentax-hack.info/documents/hardware.html

This actually shows the K100D mainboard. It has screws and connectors so it is replaceable. However. If you have ever replaced a laptop motherboard/ repaired a pocket watch you will not undertake this lightly.

It is very easy to snap locking tabs, forget where screws go, peel connector strips from the backing plastic etc etc.

If you are methodical and used to detailed work you could have a go yourself. But after spending on a mechanical fail K100D you could still end up without a functioning camera, with no comeback apart from kicking yourself even harder.

For your £165 you get the repair and a guarantee an if they fail you get your money back.

Thanks for all the replies.

I have sent the £7 and will get the camera back soon.
Unless Stefan gets a positive answer form Pentax benelux, it will go on ebay as spares/repair. Hopefully someone will think they can fix it...or want mechanical parts.

Still in a bit of a quandry about which camera to go for next. It took me months to decide firstly Pentax, then K100d when I decided I needed [wanted] a dslr six months ago. Must do some research and I'm still open to suggestions.

Andy

Still have no answer from them

In the UK, if it can be argued/proved that an interruption of the mains power supply caused an electrical item to fail, you can make a claim on your electricity provider who will repair or replace that faulty item at their discretion.

Thats interesting Peter, unfortunately I dont think you'd have much of a leg to stand on if its down to a circuit breaker tripping due to a fault in the home, I was sat in front of the PC a few weeks ago when it suddenly shut down, at first I thought It had thrown a wobbly as I couldnt get it to start up again, then the wife who was ironing commented that her iron had gone cold, it was that which had thrown a wobbly and tripped the circuit breaker for the ring main.

The CPU itself has a simple routine to accept serial data on a few test pins and store it into the flash. The whole process starts with connecting the CPU via a J-Tag programmer to a PC with special software.
I guess the camera has to be opened for this procedure. There are two or three steps to completely reinstall the OS.

-Linus-

All I can say is, wait for a more appropriate time to report the event to your power provider

And hope they don't trawl the internet like many corporations are starting to do.

Without uberrimae fidei, you land on "go to jail".

According to an independent repair shop this is sometimes possible, but if the RAM is corrupted half way through, there is no way to clear/overwhite/reset it...not sure I believe him, could just be engineers backing each other up.

He did also say that it's reasonably straightforward to swap the main board out, so all I need is a dropped K100d and some luck.

Andy

Could you post a link that substantiates this?

Well using deception to gain a benefit is probably a crime.
I'd be highly surprised if insurance claims investigators do not use the internet.

Just what do you mean by your post anyway? Spell it out for me!

I used to be an insurance claims investigator. We didn't investigate anything where the claim was less than a few thousand pounds (our fee for each investigation, which is paid by the Insurers, was around £600).