software damage on a card

Hi, I have a general question: can the software on a card (here a profibus-card) be damaged (so that the card has to be re-initialized, i.e. the software has to be re-uploaded) if the PC in which it is plugged in is turned-off abruptly during operation? Is this basically possible?

We had such a problem (with a card that had to be re-initialized after the PC was powered off) and the customer claims the damaged card SW cannot have been caused by the abruptly turning off.

Some help would be really great. Thanks!

Jo

Reply to
Josef Jarousse
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Anything is possible with a buggy software, the problem is to prove it.

Reply to
Lanarcam

Does the card have the ability to store setup parameters in on-board non-volatile memory? If so, and the card was in the process of updating those parameters at power-off, the configuration could be corrupt, which might require a SW reload to clear.

--Gene

Reply to
Gene S. Berkowitz

snipped-for-privacy@arcor.de (Josef Jarousse) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

All kinds of strange things can happen with an abrupt power-off, most of them bad. And conversely, much like Windblows, many things can be cured by a nice clean reboot. YMMV

Reply to
Anthony

Hi Gene, the card has exactly this ability, and I understand what you say. But during normal operation, I guess there is no updating, that's why I ask:

- is a SW damage possible when there is no update in progress, for instance due to high voltage during powering off? is this possible? even if it is not very likely to happen?

- is it possible that after a power-off and reboot, some driver on the PC (not on the card) has been damaged or are not started, so that the card cannot be adressed and it looks like a card SW problem?

The main question is: is there ANY theoretical possibility that a card cannot be addressed (and has to be reconfigured) after a power-off? Maybe there are other scenarios?

Thanks Jo

Reply to
Josef Jarousse

on-board

This is possible, the registry could be damaged, or a driver file, but then you would have reinstalled the driver.

It can happen Spirit's computer memory was built to tolerate the extreme radiation environment of outer space and to safeguard against power-off cycles so its programs and data will remain intact and not be erased accidentally when the rover shuts down at night. Spirit has 128 megabytes of volatile random-access memory (RAM) and 256 megabytes of non-volatile flash memory The JPL team thinks the problem is in the rover's two flash memories. Engineers bypassed the flash memory problem by commanding the rover to use its random-access memory instead. Further examination confirmed that flash memory hardware was working, pointing the finger at file management software as source of Spirit's troubles

Reply to
Lanarcam

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