Early testing of the new v4 bootloader uncovered a bug, but upgrades now appear to be going smoothly for everyone. We still need additional testers before it’s ready to deploy. If you have access to a PIC programmer, please consider testing the bootloader upgrade release candidate. We’ve had about 10 successful upgrades, it would be great to have twice that many before inviting other Bus Pirate users to upgrade.
If you have any feature requests for the v4 firmware, feel free to list them here.
I understand this bootloader upgrade is not intended for v1a hw, is it? But then … will v1a be supported in the future firmware versions? Like v4 and on?
Yes, once v4 is tested on v2go/v3 I’ll make a version for v1a. I know there’s a lot of those out there, and I’ll keep supporting them.
However, I don’t intend to support v0a or v2a with the new bootloader. I’ll continue to make compiles if someone else configures the bootloader ASM to work, but I’d rather not support those branches any more.
Here’s a bootloader v4 compile for v1a (totally untested). It doesn’t have an installer yet, so you have two options to program it:
1. Program the bootloader firmware with a PIC programmer.
2. Uncheck ‘preserve config fuses on erase’ in the old bootloader, erase, and then upload the new bootloader. Then connect to the new bootloader by placing a jumper on the pins AFTER plugging it in (MODE LED with light after jumper is in place). Now upload the v4 firmware for v1a to complete the upgrade.
Please only use this if you have a programmer to revert to the old bootloader if it doesn’t work. I haven’t tested it because I no longer have working v1a hardware.
http://code.google.com/p/the-bus-pirate/source/browse/#svn/trunk/firmware/v4-nightly/BPv1a
Hi,
what about updating the firmware with linux? Is it expected to work with the regular python script?
Hi Gerd – The updater can be installed with the existing python script.
The new bootloader has a GUI and console that should work on Linux and Mac with Mono (though try it first because I haven’t tested it).
Hopefully after the new bootloader is out there we’ll get a simple python script to replace the old one. The protocol is very simple.
I’m hoping to be able to test this soon. I have a few boards ready to be assembled, just waiting for PICs to arrive.
James
Just say the word when you think a non-PIC guy without a PIC programmer is safe ;-)
Upgrade worked and it passed the self test :)