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Topic: PICqueno32 programming woes (Read 6708 times) previous topic - next topic

PICqueno32 programming woes

I'm building a free PICqueno32 PCB, and am running into some trouble programming it.

First off, I just populated my board with the PIC, C1, C2, C3 (power supply caps), C8, C9, C10, C11, C12 (PIC bypass caps), the 8MHz crystal and caps, and R3 and R4, since they were all up in there (and which I now realize are unnecessary, since I am not planning to use an FT232 chip, but to wire up my FTDI cable, instead.  I also populated R8 and R10 (resistors as part of the reset system).

A few other notes:
* I used 22pF caps on the crystal, since those have worked for me with these crystals before.
* I used a PIC32MX320F128H, instead of the F064H.  Is it bad to assume these would be program-compatible?

When I try to connect with my ICD3 (and power the target circuit from the ICD) with MPLAB 8.66, it gives me a "failed to get Device ID" error.

Looking at the "Status" on the ICD3 settings, it shows that:
* ICD3 VPP is 3.16
* ICD3 VDD is 3.30
* Target VDD is 3.23
 However, when I measure the voltage on the board, I only get 1.79V between the VCC and GND pins of the ICSP header.

I tried powering up first with just a Bus Pirate (awesome trick, Ian, in your video), and when I do that, it looks like the voltage between 3V3 and groun on the board is holding steady at 3.3V, so I don't think there's a short or anything like that, but rather, this makes me think there is a problem with my ICD3.

Has anyone else out there experienced similar issues?  My google-fu has not been very helpful here, and I don't have a lot of PIC programming experience to draw on (though I've done it successfully for a number of 3.3V and 5V projects).  What else should I be looking at?

I've carefully checked the soldering job, and I am pretty sure there are no bridged pins or other soldering issues.  My "swipe and wick" method for small-pitch ICs has been workable in the past.

Re: PICqueno32 programming woes

Reply #1 –
This test was just to check out the PIC before I went to the trouble of populating the rest of the board, so I haven't really put in any of the voltage regulator sub-circuits (apart from some caps).  I've been successful programming the PIC in a project before much of the rest of the circuit (which usually isn't necessary for programming) is in place.

In this case, though, I'm worried that something might be wrong with my ICD3, and so I'm mainly looking for advice on how to troubleshoot it.  Since having the ICD3 power the target circuit is optional, I figured I should be able to, say, provide power to the circuit with the Bus Pirate while programming it with the ICD3, but if the ICD3 is jacked up, I wouldn't count on that being successful.

Re: PICqueno32 programming woes

Reply #2 –
I have simular issues with a pickit3 clone. The powersupply wasn't powerfull enough to power anything except a bare chip. When I measure the voltage it is lower then the se tting in mplab. Powering with an external supply was the sollution.

Re: PICqueno32 programming woes

Reply #3 –
Quote
PIC32MX320F128H

That is the right chip, I made a mistake. I thought there was also a video of my removing it and soldering the right chip :)

I'm sorry, I don't know anything about ICD3.
Got a question? Please ask in the forum for the fastest answers.

Re: PICqueno32 programming woes

Reply #4 –
In case anyone is interested, I was able to get my ICD3 working again.  I tried a few other things (external power supply, different versions of MPLAB and MPLABX) without any luck, and submitted a ticket.  I was directed to this self-help site (http://www.microchip.com/cisar/), which suggested a number of things to try, none of which worked (I couldn't get any good results with the self-test interface board).  After an installation of MPLAB v8.80, the ICD3 didn't even show up in the debugger/programmer menu!  When I tried to use the "tool switching" program that will switch ICD3 drivers between MPLAB v8 and MPLABX, it didn't seem to make any difference.

So it finally occurred to me to try with a clean MPLAB v8.80 installation on a different PC.  After that, I was able to successfully use a the test board, and detect, and program, the PICqueno32 using ICD3 power.

After this success, I went back to my main PC and removed all versions of MPLAB and MPLABX, and did a clean install, and was successful in re-programming the PICqueno32.

So, the moral is, watch out if you decide to mess around with MPLAB and MPLABX concurrently, and forget if you think you know what the problem is, and just go through the checklist.