Quoted from shaneo:Be careful messing with these IO boards. I killed the bootloader on one of mine when messing with it on the weekend and have the warn led also, however when I open a term to the Utilite and run Avrdude, it sees the board, and when I connect the PicKit and read, the IO's info led blinks so all seems OK, and all that's needed is a new bootloader via programmer.U
IO updates definitely invoke Avrdude. The update package installer freewpc_1.41-r0_armel.deb contains "Reopening %s %s -C %s -p32MX795F512L -cstk500v2 -P %s -b %u 2>&1 avrdude /etc/avrdude.conf dude %s cmdline %s .
The programmer in /etc/avrdude.conf is hardly likely to work but I'm not sure where the override is, or if it's just using avrftdi or nix gpio. If the bootloader is shot this doesn't matter anyhow and it needs to be erased and re-progg'd.
Where's Romain when you need him?
Be aware .100 pin holes on the boards near the 4 way dip switch do not connect to the PIC32's MCLR, nor do the data and clock pins.
I'll get to my board on the weekend and accurately document the procedure.
shaneo,
Thanks for the info. I'm confident that together we can get a handle on these IO boards and put some documentation up that will help others in the same boat.
I'm approaching this with the boards out of the machine powered by a bench power supply. You only need to supply 5 volts to work with the PIC. Right now I only have the version 1.3 boards from my FT.
I've ordered the PicKit 3 but while I was waiting I started looking into this a little more.
Are you sure the 0.1" header does not connect to the ICSP pins on the PIC32? I traced it visually last night and convinced myself that they do. There are actually 2 sets of clock and data pins (PGECx and PGEDx) on this version of PIC32. I didn't trace the /MCLR pin all the way back to the chip, but it did tie to a resistor under the reset button. It sure looks like the pinout matches the PicKit pinout to me.
If you are not using the header pins, how did you connect the PicKit? Did you solder wires on the board?
What boot loader code are you using?
My plan was to attempt to read the code from a working board then flash a copy of it to the non-working board. Of course that all depends on the code protection bit not being set. The backup plan was to try and find the code in the Yocto image. Maybe you've found it already?
If you connect a working board to a PC by USB and power it externally
, you can use a serial terminal to interact with the board. Baud rate is 115200. I've found a few commands the board will respond to and echo back information. The board that is flashing the WARN LED does not respond at all (at least to the few commands that I know of).
You said running Avrdude on the Utilite that you could see the board with a flashing WARN LED? That surprised me, but that also is a good sign that there may be a way to recover a board in that state while it's still in the game.
I'll post more soon.