Bricked DM500s V8 Recovered

[bp1]

I have a DM500S V8 box which i recently bricked. I haven't really made any useful posts so hopefully this will be the first of many.
I wanted to try the commander fw which i uploaded to my Dm500. I didnt like this so decided to go back to my original fw using the flashwizard tool. Half way through the upload something went wrong and flashwizard failed. I have used flashwizard many times before and have never had any problems. On switching the DM500 on all i got was a blank screen. The green led would come on for a minute than switch off. I couldn't connect again via lan or ping the DM.
I then tried Dreamup and again i couldn't connect to my box.
I must have read hundreds of posts on these forums and eventually i recovered my DM500.
Hopefully this post will be useful to all those that have experienced problems especially with Dreamup. I have downloaded almost every version on these forums but dreamup always failed to connect to the DM.
After four days i got dreamup to work. The reason dreamup would not work was because of my null modem cable.

To test your null modem cable and ensure your PC com port is configured correctly you can carry out a loopback test on your PC. I used a util called serial loopback test which you can find at
Download SerialLoopbackTestSetup_110.exe from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way
You can use a paper clip to short pins 2 and 3 in your null modem cable and then run the util. If your cable is good and ports configured correctly the loopback test will show green bars with no errors. If you see red bars or errors your cable or serial port is not good. You can also check just you PC serial port by shorting the pins 2 and 3. I did this with a screwdriver. In this way you will establish if your serial port is the problem. Once i had established my PC com ports were good i than cut my null modem cable. I had to use a multimeter to find pins 2, 3, and 5. Pins 2 and 3 must be crossed on the other DB9 plug. Only after getting past this stage was i able to use dreamup. Infact all versions of dreamup i downloaded now work.
A big thanks to everyone here for the great posts which helped me revive my DM500S.

[plasterer]

you forgot to say mate ,these tests are best done while in the bath,for best results ........................Paul

[spartacussat]

I really did not get the meaning of the whole post. Was it just to tell us what a null modem cable is?

[bp1]

I really did not get the meaning of the whole post. Was it just to tell us what a null modem cable is?

Had this problem with the box which i bricked. Reading many posts here i had similar problems like others where i could not connect to the box using the null cable. At this stage i was unsure if the problem was dreamup or the cabling or serial port on my PC. I bought in good faith what was described as a null cable. However it was the cable which was preventing me from using dreamup. The only way forward was to test to see if my problem was a serial port problem on the PC, a Null cable problem or not using the correct version of dreamup for my box. I was just trying to provide some feedback to anyone else having problems with dreamup on how to test which part of the process is probably causing the failure. Really sorry for the confusion within my post.

[ontherack]

you forgot to say mate ,these tests are best done while in the bath,for best results ........................Paul

just to ask does the water need to be hot or cold, ?????