Voiding a Warranty: Not Really? - General Help and Assistance on using CHDK stable releases - CHDK Forum
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Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?

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Offline iteo

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Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?
« on: 31 / December / 2007, 21:51:32 »
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I am new to this, so pardon my ignorance. But from reading the faqs on the website, it appears that the warranty of the camera is only voided if the program isnt permanent on the camera. My questions are 1: Is it true that this program is only loaded into the RAM and thus it theoretically shouldnt cause damage or a voiding of the warranty and 2: Does this program leave any permanent trace or log of this program on the camera that Canon repair services would find if sent in? If the program doesnt leave any traces(after being turned off) and the memory card is erased when sent in, Canon would not be able to tell that the camera was changed, right? In other words, this program has a few risks potentially with scripts overextending the physical capabilities of the camera, but in the long run if the warranty is still ongoing you could still have it repair. Sorry for this rant, but it seems that if all this is true, its an important point to make that this program has less risks than apparent, and it would not void the warranty if the user was wise and erased their memory card. I'm looking for professional opinions and hopefully answers from the developers themselves. I feel that this is vital to the success and attention to this upgrade. I hope that you will pay attention to my questions and truthfully answer them, but either way Happy New Year and thank you for looking at this topic.
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Offline GrAnd

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Re: Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?
« Reply #1 on: 01 / January / 2008, 05:19:15 »
Quote from: iteo on 31 / December / 2007, 21:51:32
1: Is it true that this program is only loaded into the RAM and thus it theoretically shouldn't cause damage or a voiding of the warranty.
Yes. The CHDK does not touch any code/data in the FlashROM/NVRAM.

Quote from: iteo on 31 / December / 2007, 21:51:32
2: Does this program leave any permanent trace or log of this program on the camera that Canon repair services would find if sent in?
The CHDK itself does not leave any traces. It is possible that the Canon somehow counts the number of "firmware updates", but I do not have any evidence.
Anyway, for at least a year of CHDK existence nobody heard about any damages caused by CHDK and warranties voided by the same case.
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Offline iteo

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Re: Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?
« Reply #2 on: 01 / January / 2008, 11:45:06 »
Ok. So now i would like to know how this program could harm my camera directly. I know that there has not been reported incidents, but in order to overextend the capabilities of physical features such as zoom and shutter speed, would you have to be using a script? Is the program itself more conservative in the extension of physical capabilities? I still have around a year left in my warranty, and I'm trying to decide whether it is worth it to try this( i take care of my camera fairly well and i do not foresee any immediate problems in the next year) and i would be more willing to try it if there aren't many risks as long as im careful about what i load. If there arent many risks( can even an overextension of a capability be repaired just by restarting the camera?), if I'm careful, and if Canon probably wouldn't even be able to realize that i had used this, would it be worth it(in your personal opinion) to go ahead with this on a full warranty? (sorry for the rambling)
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Offline Barney Fife

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Re: Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?
« Reply #3 on: 01 / January / 2008, 14:28:03 »
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« Last Edit: 22 / April / 2008, 09:30:31 by Barney Fife »
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Offline cybernut

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Re: Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?
« Reply #4 on: 02 / January / 2008, 08:40:56 »
Two days Barney?  You must be getting old   :haha :lol  I did my first CHDK the same day I received  mine - but then I specifically bought my camera because of the advantages of CHDK.

Happy New Year everyone.

C
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Offline fudgey

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Re: Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?
« Reply #5 on: 02 / January / 2008, 18:03:09 »
I believe you can't be certain that CHDK is 100% safe. Them lovely engineers at Canon might know better, obviously. Since it seems nobody has wrecked a camera so far, I think we're pretty safe. I bought my A570IS recently and chose it instead of a more expensive Nikon model thanks to CHDK (which found it's way on my SD card the very day I got the camera, obviously...you're not alone cybernut  :P ).


Anyway, if CHDK ever turns out to be somewhat destructive, it could be due to a number of things. The effect would very likely be different for each camera model.                             

Ideally, the camera hardware and the deepest system level functions of the firmware and things that possibly lie between these two should protect all parts (such as the processor, image sensor, batteries and regulators, motors etc) from dangerously faulty software being able to cause overheating, mechanical parts from getting rammed outside safe working areas or random things from getting written to non-volatile memory locations to name a few threats.

Usually products aren't quite ideal. When a deadline gets closer or doing things properly turns out to be too expensive, engineers may be forced to solve problems in software and just document things well and try to remember these things each time they modify their code.

That said, I'm pretty confident my camera will be destroyed either due to gravity or liquid immersion or the combination of the two, not CHDK  ::)
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Offline cybernut

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Re: Voiding a Warranty: Not Really?
« Reply #6 on: 03 / January / 2008, 08:21:13 »
I don't think anyone on the forum has had a problem with CHDK...  But GrAnd has a good point - maybe Canon has a secret counter in there.  If you are worried, then use it for a month or so as built.  Usually in electronics, infant mortality happens within the first few days.  This will give you the opportunity to investigate the features of your camera and gain confidence it's not going to break on you.  After that...   ::)

C
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