On RFM I have an early version of the code (maybe even 1.0) and have never bothered to upgrade.

With NuCore, how will upgrades work?

Will they be installed over a com port?

Will it be possible to easily roll forward and backwards between versions? Or maybe select a specific code rev at boot or from the menu?

People are going to really love this part. To upgrade the code all you need to do is put the update files in a specific directory and the update takes a fraction of a second, one time, during startup. We *could* support all versions of code. We will most likely only support >=1.5 on rfm and >=1.4 of swe1. The reason for this is the earlier code in both games had bugs. We don't want anyone to load earlier software and think Nucore is causing the issue. Plus I don't think there are any compelling reasons to use older code. If there are please let us know.

That sounds pretty slick.

Would this special directory be automounted from a usb stick? Or does a file have to be copied from a command prompt. And, if the latter, do we need to open it up and plug in a keyboard or would it support a terminal interface over the serial port?

I've been pretty happy with the early version and didn't want to blow away all the high scores to upgrade (maybe that doesn't happen with p2k but I haven't found any bugs serious enough to warrant an upgrade).

Does it work to roll back from 1.6 to 1.5?

Just curious. On a product I'm working on we've always been able to roll forward and back but had to draw the line when we had a bug in one new version that, when installed, wouldn't allow any more upgrades or downgrades (USB mass storage library incompatibility - oops).

Not sure about the roll-back, never tried it

We're working on the usb stuff right now. Our goal, and I'm pretty sure we're going to be able to pull it off, will be to have a section in our menu that will allow you to insert a usb drive and extract the contents to nucore (mp3's, program, pictures, etc.) The usb will have a certain directory structure so you'll know where to put each type of file. It should all be automated and not require anyone to learn any linux command or require bringing up the GDM. So upgrading nucore will work like stern pins (only better/faster)