I think there's also an easier method of determining firmware version...
Exiftool. Just drag and drop an image onto exiftool and a window will pop up with lots of information about the picture. For my pictures, I have the line 'Firmware Revision: 1.01 rev 2.00'. I think this means 1.01b, so equivalently, 1.01a would probably be '1.01 rev 1.00'.
Apart from that, I agree with Barney Fife. You'll have to do 'technical stuff' to get it to work anyway.