Touch Best firmware for original Touch?

[MacEachaidh]

My first Kobo, a venerable Touch N905B, appears to be still functioning, but tends to choke on recent(ish) versions of the firmware, even on epubs that have no issues on my Aura HD.

I know, it may simply be failing hardware, but I thought I'd try a software solution first. Assuming it is a compatibility issue with recent firmware, can anyone with a better understanding of these things than mine please suggest a likely version I should try rolling it back to?

It's currently running 3.17.3. I don't mind losing recent features for the sake of functionality, so what's a good benchmark version? 2.6.1 maybe?

[frostschutz]

Please elaborate "tends to choke"?

I think in 3.16.x or 3.17.x was where Kobo added "sickel", a process that reboots the Kobo when things appear to be hanging, and it was sometimes too aggressive (rebooted the device even when there was no real need to) so it was disabled later on...

So if your problem is unwanted reboots, both older and newer firmwares might help you.

I'd always try with latest firmware first and only downgrade if you have a specific issue with it you hope to solve...

[MacEachaidh]

I mean it hangs. As in locks up, but not bad enough to need a pinhole reset -- simply switching it off with the slider and rebooting brings it back, but then it'll do the same a few minutes later, often on page-turns or opening a book.

As I remember it, it started having this problem a couple of firmware versions prior to 3.17, and I gave up trying to use it. I suspect it's not worth paying to have serviced (compared to buying a new one), even if someone could still get parts etc. But I was thinking I should either try to get it working again, or free up the shelf space.

[davidfor]

I have an N905 Touch that is still running fine. It has had every firmware version on it with no problems. And I've just taken the screen from another N905 Touch that had a completely dead battery, and put it in an N905B Touch that had a broken screen. It seems to be working fine with 3.19.5761. I don't use either much, just enough to test firmware changes and so I can fiddle with them without losing anything important.

A possible problem is the kernel. Kobo didn't update the kernel in the Touch between firmware 2.6.1 and 3.16.0. There seemed to be some problems happen if you factory reset and went straight to one of the versions without the kernel. Factory resetting, installing 2.6.1 and then the later firmware seemed to be better.

Of course, there is still a problem. For a long time the firmware has had a bug in the code to install the kernel during the update. I can't remember if it affected the Mark 3 devices, but it meant the kernel didn't get installed. The code run after a factory reset did install the update. What that means is that it's possible the problem with 3.17 might be that the kernel was not updated and something in it is needed. A factory reset would fix this. And a factory reset does solve a lot of other weird problems as well.

Having said that...

My Glo started behaving like what you are describing. I eventually replaced the internal SD card with a spare I had, and it is almost like new. The card size won't matter much. I know people have used 16GB cards in the Touch, and I think 32GB cards are OK.

[MacEachaidh]

I did try a complete factory reset (natch!) before posting here. Problem with that is that then re-registering it means it upgrades to the new firmware and hangs all over again.

Anyway, it's running 2.6.1 now, and hasn't hung once. (So far.) I'll see how it goes.