ISP for Allen Sys Lab Pro 51

[John Murphy]

I am using an Allen Systems Lab Pro 51 board
This includes the P89C51RC2xx, a DS1233 econo-reset chip and an RS-232 serial connection for a PC.

When I am at the point where I have an assembled program to send to the 8051, what are the steps I need to follow?

Assuming I have a hex file to load beginning at 00H and have indeed loaded into the WinISP buffer on the PC,

I am guessing...
(1) power off Lab Pro 51 board
(2) connect cable from board to PC comm port
(3) set prog/run switch on board to prog, not sure what connections this makes but I presume it is all the correct ones to enable the chip to be programmed
(4) power on Lab Pro 51 board

THEN I do something in the WinISP program?

Any info on this would be much appreciated.

[Andy Ayre]

Presumably the prog/run switch is connected to PSEN and when you power up the board, PSEN will be in the correct state in the prog setting to place the device into ISP mode.

Assuming that did place the device into ISP mode (your board manufacturer should be able to provide a definative answer) then you just need to program with WinISP, selecting the correct device, baud rate, COM port, etc.

Note that if your device is a P89C51RC2Hxx (it has a 'H' in the name) then you are ok to use WinISP, but I recommend you consider Flash Magic instead.
If your device is one of the new P89C51RC2xx (no 'H') devices then you cannot use WinISP as it does not support it (even though at first glance it looks like it does) - you must use Flash Magic instead.

[John Murphy]

Okay, I tried to take this a bit further.

My microcontroller is indeed an exact Philips part number P89C51RC2BA.

I entered in P89C51RC2xx and the correct oscillator freq (11.05 MHz) into WinISP. I loaded my hex file output of the Keil uView2 assembler. So far, so good.

Then I switched the Prog/Run switch on my Allen Systems Lab Pro 51 board to "Prog", plugged the provided DB9 serial cable into the "Serial A" port on the GST PC, and with great trepidation and my $150 on the line plugged in the little AC adapter cable.

Good news was no obvious smoke!
Bad news is WinISP was unable to read the chip, or to read the vectors and security bits. Cycled thru all the baud rates and came back with "invalid respons to 'U'" or something like that.

So it could be the wrong COM port (I tried setting to the com1 and com2 in the drop-down, but didn't try typing anything for some other port which may be my problem).

Or it may simply be as you say that WinISP does not support the part even though it is explicitly called out in the target list and the Philips AN461 also goes into a bit about WinISP (though nothing really helpful).

Part of my problem is also that I purchased the board from a third party with no documentation and can not find the Allen Systems Lab Pro 51 User Manual anywhere on the web - although several folks have told me it is somewhere out there.

So I am working in the blind a bit.

But thanks for the tip. I'll look into downloading FlashMagic.

[Andy Ayre]

As I stated in my previous message:

WinISP does not support the newer non-H devices, even though at first glance it appears to.

Originally the Rx2 devices were released and no mention was made of the 'H' in the part name because there was no need to. Therefore there is no mention of the 'H' in the WinISP device list.

Then the new generation Rx2 devices came out and there was a need to differentiate between the old and new generation. It is at this point that the 'H' was mentioned as a way of doing this easily.

The device selection list in WinISP was never updated to reflect this and Flash Magic has since become the main Philips ISP tool. Flash Magic does indicate which are the 'H' devices and which are not.

The old and new generation devices are not fully compatible - they have different flash blocks, etc. Therefore if you wish to use the newer devices, then you have to use Flash Magic or write your own ISP software to do the job.

Philips application note AN461 was originally written for the old generation 'H' devices and the 66x family, both of which are supported by WinISP.

WinISP also suffers from a major misunderstanding of how the autobauding works in Philips devices and usually results in failure to autobaud or autobaud at a very slow speed. Flash Magic does not suffer from this problem.

[Andy Ayre]

I typed "allen systems lab pro 51 manual" into Google and the third result is a link to what appears to be the manual for your board.

http://www.cecs.csulb.edu/~brewer/346/Lab%20Pro-51.pdf

Google is a good search engine BTW.