I got a pretty good deal on eBay for an ICS 8065 Ethernet GPIB Controller. When it arrived, I reset the network configuration by holding down the reset button on the back panel while turning on the unit and waiting 10 seconds. This set the unit to its factory default IP address of 192.168.0.254, so I could connect to it from a web browser on my laptop.

Once in, I found that the installed firmware was years out of date, and set out to update it. Unfortunately, the firmware can’t be updated from a web interface. It is necessary to use a Windows utility. I’m not really a Windows user, though I have a Windows machine in the house. Using it would require more fussing around with network connections than on my laptop, which I plugged directly into the 8065 while using WiFi to communicate with the rest of my network, and browse the web.

I didn’t even consider running the software in WINE, opting instead to use a 64-bit Windows 7 virtual machine on my laptop. Unfortunately, when I tried to run the updater program in the firmware update ZIP file I downloaded from the ICS Website I was met with an error that comdlg32.ocx wasn’t registered.

After a bit of googling, I found a solution, which I’m sharing here for anyone else who runs into this. Comdlg32.ocx is somewhat dated software. I don’t know if it was part of earlier versions of Windows, or whether it was the responsibility of applications to distribute it as part of their installer package. What I do know is that the ICS Firmware updater doesn’t have a Windows Installer, that comdlg32.ocx wasn’t included the zip file with the firmware, that it wasn’t anywhere on my system, and that I haven’t installed many other applications.

From there:

1. I found a place to download a zipfile with comdlg32.ocx it that didn’t seem too dicey.
2. I scanned the downloaded zip file with Windows Security Essentials to check for known malware.
3. Unzipped the file, and saved it to C:\Windows\SysWOW64. The SysWOW64 directory is only present on 64-bit versions of windows, on 32-bit windows, you’d save it to System32. Oh, also, your Windows system folder might be something other than c:\Windows, which either means you knew what you were doing and where to find it, or that something horrible happened during your windows installation that you may have to relive a bit of now, on your own, without my help.
4. Ran “cmd” as administrator to open a command line. You can click the windows/start menu, search for “cmd” then right click on it in the results and choose “Run as Administrator”
5. In the command window, I issued the following command: “regsvr32.exe C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Comdlg32.ocx”

Once I did this, I could double click and run the “M805_update.exe” program without error and update the firmware.