Sorry for the hiatus, but I had to wait for SeeeStudio's shippment to arrive...
Well, so I now have a new v4 BusPirate and wanted to use that as a PIC programmer to fix my old v3... Unfortunately I couldn't get it done. I will outline what I did and would appreciate any help inresurecting my v3 BusPirate. (I am doing all my work in Windows now, btw.)
The v4 I got gave the following information when plugged in:
I am somewhat at a loss here as I thought the the picprogramer is more or less as low-level as it gets and should be able to get even a completely empty/corrupted PIC to work... Well, not for me...
As such, any hints and tips are greatly appreciated :) Thanks!
OK, looks like I have to get some new toys, i.e. a new BusPirate v4
Looking through the site though, I noticed the Bus Blaster, which seems to be mainly targeted towards being used as a JTAG gadget (and I don't own one yet). So, although apparently being discontinued (but I assume that is still is somewhat functional), could I use a Bus Blaster to reflash my old v3 Bus Pirate? That way I won't end up having two (nearly) identical thingies sitting on my desk...
Darn.... I hoped I'd get away without having to reflash the bootloader...
Well, unfortunately I neither have another Bus Pirate lying around (just an Arduino Uno and some simulated STK500 programmers) nor do I have any experience in programmings PICs - resulting in many questions...
I googled a little and found some related websites, although nothing that I could identify as noob-proof turnkey solution:
2. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3093#p32734 This one seems to need an Atmega8 for some 3.3V compatibility and I only have a 5V Arduino Uno
3. http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Pir ... Programmer I am not sure if you referred to this post when stating that I could use another BusPirate to program my bricked one as it seems to rely on some additional hardware, the programming adapter. Although, I am not 100% sure that adapter would be needed for my case as it seems to be needed only "for older 8 bit PIC 12/14/16/18 devices." Is the BusPirate a "24" device, i.e. can I get away without that programming adapter?
4. http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP Although being my favorite setup instruction (as it seems fairly noob-friendly) I am not at all sure that ISP (AVR) programming and ICSP (PICs ?) programming are actually the same.
As you see, many questions and (unfortunately) little understanding of the PIC fundamentals. As such, any post pointing to noob-proof "help, fix it" page -- especiall any page using an 5V Arduino -- would be greatly appreciated.
Upload ' BPv3-v2blupdaterva3-v4.1.hex' to the PIC with the existing v2 bootloader. Use your normal upgrade procedure for the v2 bootloader to load the upgrade HEX into the PIC. V2 bootloader instructions for: Windows, GNU/Linux, OSX.
where the links for "upgrade procedure" and "Windows" point to the site that I referenced as the 'Windows way' in my prior post, the link starting from "Linux" points to the site that I referenced as the 'Linux way'...
I have a SparkFun Bus Pirate (TOL-09544 [1]) from 2009 which has been collecting dust for quite I while. I want(ed) to use it for a current project, but had the apparently not so great idea to upgrade beforehand... Well, as you might have guessed, this didn't work out well -- which is why I am posting here, hoping somebody could point me into a new/different direction (or even better, to a direct solution...)
:~> python P24qp.py -a BPv3-v2blupdaterva3-v4.1.hex -s /dev/ttyUSB0 -v
That didn't really work, so I tried the Windows way , too.
Both essentially result in the same error:
The bootloader upgrade (i.e. uploading [tt:]BPv3-v2blupdaterva3-v4.1.hex[/tt:]) seems to (somewhat) work, but there are verification errors outside the range where I should expect them (i.e. above 0x500, see [3] for a dump of the 'Windows way' error message dump).
Also, after restarting the Bus Pirate without the PGC-PGD jumper (MODE light ist off), I cannot get the 'greeting text' shown on all the screenshots: all I get is total serial console gibberish (I double checked that the baud rate is set to 115200, and also tried all the other usual settings down to 9600 - same result : gibberish, slightly different depending on baud rate).
It appears that whatever bootloader is on the board is still functioning as bridging the PGC and the PGD pins brings up the MODE light and I seem to be able to transfer something to the Bus Pirate (both, in the Linux way as well as in the Windows way) - unfortunately always resulting in the same gibberish on the serial console...
For what it's worth: I used openSUSE for the 'Linux way' (minicom as the terminal), and Windows 7 Enterprise for the 'Windows way' (Tera Term as the terminal). Both systems are 64bit.
I do have a bunch of STK500 ISP emulatros, but I don't know enough about the non-Atmel world to know if that helps me in reflashing my BusPirate completely via ICSP... (and I also wouldn't know how to do that...)
So again, any help is totally appreciated :)
Thanks.
===================== I am a first time poster, so apparently I can't have offsite links... so I'll see that I post [1], [2], and [3] as me second post in 24h..
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