I recently installed some windows updates on my wife's home office computer. She does dictations with a Philips Speechmike USB microphone to Dragon dictate software. The Philips microphone seems good quality but wasn't cheap ($400Cdn). Upon reboot, I was greeted by a popup saying "new firmware available for your microphone" and the choice of "install now"or "later".
Oh, I wish I had clicked "later"... but I clicked "install now"... So a dialog pops up with a green bar flashing back and forth urging me to not unplug the microphone as the upgrade can take several minutes. So I wait. And wait. And wait. Then I notice that the Philips microphone software says that there is no microphone connected. And the drop down menu to select the microphone cannot select the microphone model. Troubleshooting suggestions are not helpful like saying the USB may not have enough power or that it might not like a specific port. What the heck? So I wait. And wait. And wait. Finally I bite the bullet and unplug the USB microphone and try plugging it back in with no result.
The microphone is gone and doesn't show up as a device in Windows. So I try it on a different computer with Linux. No evidence of the microphone in dmesg. The USB functionality doesn't exist anymore.
So what happened? Info is sparse online but it seems a failed upgrade can brick your device. Who writes a firmware upgrade like this? Is there no failsafe? I was relatively uninvolved in the upgrade (just click once), there were no warnings that this could ruin a $400 microphone. Fortunately, my wife has an identical microphone that was not being used at work. So once we plugged the new one in, the computer recognized it immediately indicating that it was not a driver issue caused by the update.
But is there a way to fix the old microphone? The hardware still works, it seems as though just the firmware is missing or corrupt.
Arm7 with on board flash, blah, blah, blah. Not sure how Philips disabled the USB functionality with a bad firmware upgrade, but there you go.
