# ISTA+ Software Update on F90



## MUC_G30 (Apr 12, 2021)

@PatrickTRyan thanks for getting back. I also did some research in the meantime and the major issue with ENET seems to be ECUs that switch IP addresses right? I also read that this issue may arise with a few other ECUs and ICOM.

Now, since I want to perform an I Step upgrade without having to recover anything with other tools I decided to opt for a ICOM and setup a DHCP in between notebook and ICOM to be on the safer side. 

What do you think about the following steps, am I set up properly, or is there still any flaws that may break the update?

1. Enable DHCP in the network adapter of the notebook
2. Setup DHCP server on a router
3. Change ICOM's LAN settings to DHCP
4. Connect car to Gysflash 100.12 (should have enough charging current with up to 100A) at 13.6V
5. Connect ICOM with OBD to car & with LAN to router
6. Connect router with another LAN to notebook
7. Perform the measures plan for I-Step Upgrade
8. Perform the measures plan for LCI tail light retrofit

As far as I have read a few other posts (while most are never 100% definite) there is still 2 questions I have in general to this topic:

Some say, that the DHCP setup also prevents ENET programming from failing, is this the matter with ENET programming?
It seems that newer ICOM versions already include a virtual DHCP setup, does this change the steps presented before?

Looking forward to your replies.


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## PatrickTRyan (Dec 25, 2020)

MUC_G30 said:


> @PatrickTRyan thanks for getting back. I also did some research in the meantime and the major issue with ENET seems to be ECUs that switch IP addresses right? I also read that this issue may arise with a few other ECUs and ICOM.
> 
> Now, since I want to perform an I Step upgrade without having to recover anything with other tools I decided to opt for a ICOM and setup a DHCP in between notebook and ICOM to be on the safer side.
> 
> ...


I'd say this looks pretty good. I'm not an expert by any means but like you I have spent a lot of time trying research what works. Even then I had some trial and error that certainly caused some grief.

My ICOM Next was purchased about 6 months ago. It came from China so it is likely a clone of some sort but if so it seems to be an excellent knock off at least visually. If has WiFi as well but I have only used the ethernet connection. It was already set for DHCP but will fall back to an internal IP address just like your laptop will.

The challenge I ran into was doing an iStep update with ISTA+. I had the ICOM connected directly to my laptop. ISTA+ seemed to work fine but was consistently failing to update a few of the ECUs. It just wouldn't succeed with the AMP and HU_NBT in particular. Once I put the ICOM and laptop on a spare router and let them get an IP via DHCP ISTA+ seemed to be happy.

Well happy with everything except the HU_NBT head unit. It got partially through that and then didn't finish. The partially through bit left my head unit in a half way state. Before I told my wife I just bricked a very expensive piece of my car I thought I may have a flaky network cable running to the car. It was an old one I had built many years ago using CAT3 wire and it was also very long. Since ISTA+ was not having success I moved into the car with a much shorter newer cable and fired up ESYS. I finally got ESYS to finish the flash but that was also a few trials.

That is a lot more story than you asked for. The short one is that the DHCP did seem to do the trick. Why I don't know. The ICOM maintained the same IP address throughout. That may be because the router cached the ICOM's MAC and just gave it the same IP every time it requested one.

As far as a virtual DHCP in the ICOM, I doubt that is the case. As mentioned above, mine came set to get an IP via DHCP and will fall back to an internal IP if the request fails to get an address.

I will say that doing an iStep update with ISTA+ is generally much simpler than doing so using ESYS. It also seems to be pretty fail safe (says the guy who almost bricked his head unit). ISTA+ will make a backup of settings prior to the flashing and cleanup the error mess that happens when you flash. Just make sure you use good quality cables (I now have CAT8 cables that I bought and didn't make).


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