Bus Blaster

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Preview: Bus Blaster update

August 16, 2010 in Bus Blaster, Development, preview by Ian | No comments

A newly updated Bus Blaster design is posted in the forum. The Bus Blaster is a high-speed JTAG debugger and flash ROM programmer based on the FT2232H USB chip.

Development started in the spring, but stalled because we couldn’t find the right buffer chip. We wanted to support targets from 2.0volts to 5.0volts, but we settled for 2.0volts to 3.3volts. V1 won’t have all our desired features, but we’ll add some more stuff in a future update.

As always, your comments are welcome and have a real impact the final design. Thanks for your support!

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Bus Blaster: High speed USB to JTAG, SPI, UART

March 25, 2010 in Bus Blaster, JTAG by Ian | 8 comments

The Bus Pirate can program flash chips with flashrom and debug JTAG devices with OpenOCD, but it doesn’t do these things very fast. It was designed for human-speed interaction. The Bus Pirate is a good way to learn an EEPROM chip, but you eventually integrate the chip in a real circuit with actual code. In the same way, the Bus Pirate is a good first-taste of JTAG or ROM programming, but if you do it regularly you’ll want something faster with more features.

The Bus Blaster is our solution, a device just for high-speed device programming and debugging. We’re currently designing the Bus Blaster in the forum. It will be a USB 2.0 JTAG/SPI/UART device based on the FT2232H. The FT2232H is a USB->serial converter like the FT232R currently used on the Bus Pirate, but is also has a module called an MPSSE that can be configured for high-speed JTAG and SPI modes. It won’t have a terminal interface or be programmable like the Bus Pirate, this will be a specialized programming/debugging device intended for some upcoming ARM-based projects.

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