I ran the RMA from the Web rather than Telnet if that would make any difference?
You are trying to erase everything that drives the WebIF etc! What you see via a web browser is not the custom firmware - the WebIF and the vast majority of the actual useful functions is software stored on the HDD. The only parts of the software stored in Flash are the parts which need to run even when the HDD is unavailable, plus the Humax firmware tweaked to our requirements (enabling the command line, and a few other adjustments). Something is bound to break if the process you run tries to erase the process you called it from.
My bet is you can still access the Telnet menu (by Telnet!), even if the WebIF is not currently functional, and if the WebIF doesn't come up then at least you will have the install web page - both signs that the CF is still in Flash. If there is no CF then there will be no response to a web page request to the unit's IP address (although that is not the only condition).
As far as I am aware, I have done exactly as detailed.
Clearly you didn't, and you know you didn't - there
is a difference between doing things via a Telnet session and using Webshell or Diagnostics via WebIF: Telnet provides direct access to the operating system command shell without any other layers getting in the way.
In my mind, if the 'true' firmware on the USB is the same as that on the box itself, then it would not install.
No, the firmware will install whether it is different from the currently installed firmware or not. If you are trying to update the firmware and the 'FOX does not enter the firmware update process at boot up, you have not succeeded. Go through the checklist on the wiki (or see
Quick Guide to Custom Firmware - click, the part that deals with installing firmware by USB), but the likelihood is the updater code doesn't like your USB stick.
That would not be very user friendly, or very safe. What if the firmware needed to be refreshed but the updater process refused to do it because the version number matched? What if something else was blocking the update, but the user gave up on the assumption it wasn't updating because the version installed was correct? Engineering (especially software engineering) isn't about making something that works, it's about making something that works under all circumstances (and requires a special imagination to anticipate what all those circumstances might be). Don't make an artificial restriction where a restriction isn't necessary.
It's just unfortunate that the USB storage support isn't very extensive in the Flash updater mini-environment (probably due to size limitations, you would be surprised how many different drivers are installed in - say - Windows to support all the different variations of UPD), and in any case it would not have been possible to guess what driver support 2018 UPDs would need when the design was frozen in 2010. The standard advice for firmware update problems is to use a UPD from 2010 (ie a small one).
