i had the misfortune of exploding my reader within two days of purchase. The Sony store were more than happy to replace it for me. The petrification (irrevocable bricking) happened while doing a firmware update using Sony's own updater under a virtualized copy of Windows XP running under Linux.
So now I'm scared of updating the thing. Is there a way to perform the upgrade from the SD card? I know the universal flasher seems to say it can be done, but exactly which files from Sony's updater need to be used to do it? I see two cramfs images in Sony's updater. Any advice would be appreciated!