HELP! Bricked MF Twister after failed firmware update -- ANY IDEAS?

Hi. I was attempting to make some changes to my MF Twister. Fresh download of MF Utility software wasn't working as expected, so I tried resetting the device to factory settings and updating the firmware using the Midi_Fighter_Twister release hex here.

I received an error message during the update, then the Utility program froze up. After force-quitting the utility program and rebooting laptop, my Twister has gone dark and is NOT recognized as a USB device by my laptop. It is, however, sending a recurring MIDI sysex message, which I can see in MIDI Monitor and the MF Utility log.

15:29:49.160 From IAC Driver Bus 1 SysEx Universal Non-Real Time 6 bytes F0 7E 7F 06 01 F7

Any ideas? I'm pretty sad and frustrated by this. If it helps or matters, I'm on a 2014 Intel MacBook running Big Sur (11.7.10). I would be comfortable trying out terminal / command line stuff if it might help.

THANK YOU!

Additional notes: I’ve tried to force the device into bootloader mode by holding down the corner knobs while plugging the MF Twister into a laptop USB port. Stays dark. Same sysex loop. I also found some old docs online about older MF devices that had manual hard-reset options, but I don’t have an obvious way to disassemble the unit. It looks to be an MF-0007 from the sticker on the bottom.

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Originally Posted by bkbigfish

Additional notes: I’ve tried to force the device into bootloader mode by holding down the corner knobs while plugging the MF Twister into a laptop USB port. Stays dark. Same sysex loop. I also found some old docs online about older MF devices that had manual hard-reset options, but I don’t have an obvious way to disassemble the unit. It looks to be an MF-0007 from the sticker on the bottom.

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Hi, were you able to solve this? I have the exact same problem.

Hey there, sorry to hear that updating fw is giving you abit of trouble. Worth noting is that pressing both center side buttons should activate the bootloader mode if the unit is not completely bricked. Are there any signs of life when you press both center side buttons simultaneously?

So I contacted DJTT directly for support around the same time as my original post here.

Worked with Stevan, who was awesome and had a theory that "extreme USB latency" was my real problem based on MIDI messages and firmware failures.

The simultaneous-center-side-button-press move was successful -- the device was in bootloader mode, which means it was salvageable -- but I still had no luck reinstalling firmware.

Ultimate fix for me was to connect the MF Twister to my laptop via a thunderbolt port and USB hub instead of using my laptop's built-in USB ports.

Hope that all makes sense and helps. I can dig into archived email for some of my correspondence with Stevan for more details and possible tips if anyone needs more detail.

Thx for the reply guys!

Was not aware of the bootloader mode, will try it this evening!

Ive already contacted DJTT directly and got a reply from Stewan with a couple of debug questions, so that is already a good start :)

Will update this thread when I have more news.