Hello guys.Long story short I purchased suspiciously cheap OM-D E-M1x from Amazon for 800 british pounds, while the seller claimed the camera is new.Technically speaking the camera was new and not used, but arrived with bricked firmware. Even when batteries were fully charged, camera was not powering on.But since i work as a QA engineer I decided to check what works and what does not and within one day i figured out HOW to push firmware into it.Here is how to do it:1. Get firmware fromhttps://lightsnowdev.com/…tml Web page with the guide is not official, but it appears to direct to Olympus/OM site for the firmware. Unfortunately the guide does not work for M1x, at least not completely.2. Verify the camera: a) Set it to "A" mode. b) Remove any lenses. c) Set the power button to "On" position.d) Turn the LCD screen as its viewable from the back of the camerae) Remove the battery tray, and slide it back into camera. Also ensure that batteries are as much charged as possible.If the camera lights up, and you see that LCD screen shows image from the uncovered sensor you did it correctly, and you may remove the battery.3. Loading new firmware a) Format a SD Card, preferably with a different Olympus Camera. b) Create "DCOLYMP" directory and put firmware file there. In case of M1X rename the file to "E1349999.BIN" c) Put the SD card in slot number 1.The recommendation is that there should not be any other files or directories on this SD card.d) Press the button "AEL/AFL" and drop the battery tray into camera, lock it afterwards.If the orange focus LED turns on, the firmware is loading. The process is finished when it starts blinking. Then turn off the camera with power button. Afterwards I updated firmware normally through OM Workspace.Hope this helps to someone. The process usually involves "OK" button and I tested it successfully on my E-PM2 - just the camera was not bricked and I could power it on without battery shuffling. Afterwards I found out that the camera had about 300 actuations and yeah... Like new

Thanks for your post.  Don't have EM1-X but copied info in case helps me for future with my EM10ii.

Copied!I hope I never have to do this but thanks for the post.Stephen

Bob Carstens wrote:Thanks for your post. Don't have EM1-X but copied info in case helps me for future with my EM10ii.Any idea what the process would involve with the EM10ii?

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66292782

Well, the page in first paragraph seems to provide information how to downgrade firmware. Its useful when something stops working (like few years ago M1MKII users complained about C-AF). However the page now contains much fewer firmware versions as it used in the past. The process of manual loading of firmware from SD card worked on my E-PM2 which is a backup body I purchased exactly for cases like testing these things. Mostly, you just put firmware on SD card, and turn the camera on while pressing "OK" button and firmware should load, while the orange LED serves as an indicator. My situation was different, because M1x was already bricked, and just by trying things out, I found out that its not completely dead, at least not on hardware level. I would not be surprised if such process is available for each Olympus camera, yet not all of them have power lever as M1x (E-PM2 has power button)

Similar process should work for most Olympus and OM System cameras, however there was quite a few posts about M1x. I looked at the process for all other Olympus/OM cameras, and on different forums, apparently the process did not worked for M1x, and definitely did not worked for me. Firmware has to be stored in SD card, same directory, name as recommended, but to revive a bricked M1x required the voodoo with removed lens, A mode, display in correct position and pressing AEL/AFL button instead. It took me few hours to figure out this part.

"My situation was different, because M1x was already bricked, and just by trying things out, I found out that its not completely dead, at least not on hardware level. I would not be surprised if such process is available for each Olympus camera, yet not all of them have power lever as M1x (E-PM2 has power button)"This is the part of the procedure I'm interested in, how to start if my EM10ii is already bricked.  I have used the Lightsnow procedure successfully and also recently cofirmed that I can use procedure recently posted by Michael Meissner.

Info like this is reason I'm going to miss this forum in 2 weeks.GC

Note, Lightsnowdev hasn't been updated in awhile. Since the OP then did the normal firmware update, they/she/he got the most up to date version. Over at mu-43.com I posted a thread (posting #29 in the thread) listing all of the known versions for many of the cameras:The links come from olympus-imaging.com, so they should be safe enough. I don't know if OM will eventually move from olympus-imaging.com to some other site.

Thanks. I posted the method to mu-43 forum as well, because of DPreview closure.