Originally posted by riverwatcher ...the Pentax instructions said that the earlier firmware updates had to be installed...
Actually, the instructions don't really say that. From the Pentax website:
Make sure your camera currently has firmware version 1.00 through 1.20. Before starting the update, you can check your current firmware version by turning the camera on while holding down the MENU button.
The wording is confusing. I can see how you could be confused. Its really just saying that you must have one of the previous versions, not that all of them must have been installed sequentially. They could have worded that much more clearly than they did.
There are only two ways that that condition could be unmet. First, if you already have 1.30 installed, or if you have a non-functioning camera because of corrupted internal memory or firmware. In the former case, you don't need to install 1.30; in the latter, you can't, because you need functioning firmware to install the update. In that case, you would have to send the camera to Pentax for service.
To be fair, that sort of wording is not uncommon in computer documentation. The instructions were probably written by a programmer in Japan (in Japanese) and then translated by a non-programmer into English.