Flash Magic using USB to Serial Port cable

Started by vinaybari, October 15, 2006, 11:23:03 PM

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vinaybari

Hi,
My Laptop has only USB connctor , there is no Serial Port present on it (as it is with all new Laptops)
Can I use the Flashmagic utility along with USB to Serial Port converter cable.

erikm

yes and no

This has been discussed ad nauseam and it seems that some USB to Serial Port converters will let you do it, others will not.

My GUESS is that it will be related to the handling of DTR, CTS, ... or timing, but seek and ye shall find, or mybe, I hope so for you, someone will post "the xxx USB to Serial Port converter works with FM"

erik

erik

Andy Ayre

I have an IOGear cable and it works fine, including DTR and RTS. It operates nearly the same as a real COM port. However most cables seem to be very poor emulations of COM ports.

Embedded Systems Academy, Inc.
support at esacademy dot com

Jan Waclawek

It is much more important to look at the chip inside than the "brand" of the cable. Certain prolific-chip based cables are known bad - see http://www.8052.com/forum/thread.phtml?thread=97853. Unfortunately, the cheap "cables" tend to be based exactly on this chip. It is also important to get the latest drivers, the drivers provided on the accompanying CD are often out of date and buggy - the best resource is again the chipmakers' web, rather than the "manufacturer"'s.

Jan Waclawek

vinaybari

In fact I started with ATMEL At89S52 which has ISP via parallel port.
For that I got USB to Parallel port cable and it didnt worked. The chip inside the cable was from Prolific and as your are saying these Prolific chips generally doewnot support or emulate Parallel or Serial port as it is.
So I turned to Flashmagic which has serial interface and thought that atleast USB to Serial shud do.

Before purchasing any new stuff I want to be sure that it will work. Or if anybody can suggest me AT89S52 USB based programmer(DIY kit)

Andy Ayre

Flash Magic does not support Atmel devices, so if you want to program an AT89S52 then you will need to search for Atmel programmers. Also take a look at FLIP, but you will have the same USB <--> RS232 problem.

Embedded Systems Academy, Inc.
support at esacademy dot com

Jan Waclawek

FLIP wouldn't help either, as the AT89S52 is SPI-ISP programmable and FLIP (as well as FlashMagic) is for UART-ISP programming (such as for AT89C51RD2/ED2 etc.). There are a couple of programs for the SPI-ISP intended to work over serial cables, but they mostly would fail over USB-to-serial cables, too, as these cables are not intended to work for the bint-banging which is how the SPI interface is simulated.

Btw. with USB-to-parallel cables, the problem is not Prolific-specific, but the same as described above: these cables simply can't work for the bit-banged interfaces as they support only printing on LPT and nothing else.

Jan Waclawek

helmuth_lechner

hello  every one...
I am using a MSC 900 board to programming LPC935. I am using the COM port on my desktop the programming run always well!
If I used the usb2serial cable (UTM1925 USB-Multi-IO cable) on my laptop, reading device configuration runs well, also reprogramming device configuration runs well. After starting programming the status shows "Erase" and next "Programming" and than the flash magic shoes any reactions. After braking flash magic and restarting, the command "Reading device configuration" will quit with "Unable to communicate (in use) Ensure no other aplications are using COM port. Try raising or lowering baud rate. I must restart WINOWS that FlashMagic works again.
Every body has an idea?
Thanks
Helmuth

Andy Ayre

Please generate a debug file showing the problem and send it to me. Reference this post in your email. Instructions are here:

  http://www.flashmagictool.com/debugfile.html

Andy
Embedded Systems Academy, Inc.
support at esacademy dot com