I thought to add something for the benefit of others who might have the problem that I have had.  As I mentioned, I had no problems updating the firmware on my Modfactor or Timefactor today.  I finally got the Pitchfactor to succeed in an update on the 20th or so try.  I gave it a rest after about 19 or so failures, and it did then get all the way though the update firmware write on the last attempt. On the prior failed attempts, I would get a "flash write memory error" at varying %'s of completion.   Jerome thought that perhaps an electrical spike on my first update attempt caused the problem.  Everything works now, but I want to do an upgrade again before my warranty runs out, to assure myself that this was only a random occurrence, and not a hardware issue.