Canon Camera, Hackers Manual

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C H A P T E R 3 Installing the CHDK
CardTricks will create the file ver.req during that process. Now you may
insert the card into the camera. Then:
1. Switch the camera off.
2. Switch the camera to
Playback Mode .
3. Switch the camera on again.
4. Press
FUNC/SET . While keeping FUNC/SET pressed, press DISP . Now you
should be able to read the firmware version number from the screen. It
should be something like
Firmware Ver GM1.01B . If you get the clock
instead, you were not quick enough in pressing the DISP button.
If this does not work, try to rename the file to
vers.req
. Some newer cam-
eras work with this file name.
3.3 Downloading the CHDK
Now go back to the CardTricks utility and press the Download CHDK button.
This will launch your web browser and open the URL http://mighty-hoern-
sche.de/ . Find your camera and the firmware version, and click on the link
to start the download.
The website actually lists two downloadables for each camera and each
firmware version—a complete bundle with CHDK, example scripts, fonts,
and other goodies; and a smaller version with just the core CHDK. Don’t
hesitate to download the larger version—the difference of 200 KB is hardly
noticeable even on the tiny 256 MB cards supplied with your camera.
Before the downloaded software can be transferred to your camera, you
should make your memory card bootable. Just reinsert the card into the
card reader and press the
Make Bootable button in CardTricks .
Figure 3-1
The CardTricks control screen. New
cards usually come formatted in the
FAT32 file system. They must be
reformatted in the FAT file system.
With large cards, the button Format as
FAT will automatically change to
Format as FAT32 .
Figure 3-2
This is how the camera display should
look after pressing FUNC/SET and DISP .
By keeping FUNC/SET pressed and
pressing DISP more than once, you can
scroll down the screen to show
additional information.