If you are reading this I assume you are having difficulties installing the DDC264 USB drivers on a Windows 7 64 bit system. It took me several hours (maybe I’m slow?) to work though the semi-complete information found in this forum and get it to work so I am going to detail what I did.
1. The USB drivers found in the “DDC264EVM.ZIP” file that you can get from the DDC264EVM page (DDC264 Installation) will not work with Windows 7 64 bit. But you still need to download that file and get other things out of it. So get the file and unzip the DDC264EVM folder to your Windows Desktop. There are two folders under that, .\Drivers and .\Software.
2. The USB drivers that will work with W7 64 bit are in the ZIP file found in Jason's post from Jan 27, 2012 found above in one of the other DDC264EVM threads in this forum. Download “5824.DDC on win7.zip”. In it are two folders .\Vista and .\x64 and a file "how to for windows 7, 64 bit.txt". The .txt file is cryptic, incomplete, confusing, and has errors in it so ignore it. Unzip the two folders to your Windows Desktop.
3. The USB drivers for this board are not "digitally signed" and Windows 7 64 bit has a strict policy of not letting you install digitally unsigned drivers. W7 32 bit and previous versions of Windows do not have this policy, instead, they just pop up a warning that the drivers are not digitally signed and will let you click through and install anyway. Not the case for Windows 7 64 bit. They only way to bypass this security policy is to reboot your computer and hit the F8 key to go to the Advanced Boot Options screen. The timing of when you hit the F8 key is super critical on some systems. My Dell laptop is plugged into a docking station and I use an external wireless keyboard and mouse. I had to unplug the wireless dongle from the USB port and use the laptop's keyboard directly. If you have a wireless keyboard attached, you may have to do the same. Power the computer down, then power it back up. Watch the BIOS POST screen with the manufacturer's logo (i.e. Dell in my case). As soon as that disappears, but before Windows starts, start banging on the F8 key. I have about a 1 second window of time on my Dell computers. If you are successful, the Advanced Boot Options menu shows up. Using the down arrow key, scroll down and select the Disable Driver Signature Enforcement choice and hit enter. The computer then continues to boot up, log in if you have to. Note that this Disable setting applies only for this particular boot up time. The next time you boot up, it will revert back to normal boot up.
4. Ensure that all the power supply jumpers on the board are correctly set. I found it easiest to use the USB supply configuration for +5V (see the EVM manual) at first. Plug the DDC264EVM into a USB port on your computer. Ignore any pop ups that refer to the device you just plugged in. X out of those pop ups. Go to Start>Control Panel>Device Manager (depending on how you have Windows set up, there may be other ways to get there). Find the device called “Other devices>Unknown device with a little yellow ! in it. Right click on this and select Properties. Select the Details tab. The drop down box should say Hardware Ids. In the Value text box you should see USB\VID_0451&PID_2319 or USB\VID_0451&PID_2320. In USB terminology, the VID is the Vendor ID and the PID is the Product ID. I believe that there must be two versions of this board with two different PID’s. Mine is the 2319 variety but there also seems to be a 2320 variety. Go back to the Driver tab. Click on the Update Driver… button. Select the “Browse my computer for driver software” choice. Click the Browse… button, navigate to the .\Desktop\Vista folder, and double click it. Then click the Next button. Windows then looks in that .\Desktop\Vista folder and finds the correct driver for the 2319 or 2320 varieties. Then Windows Security pops up a warning that Windows can’t verify the publisher of this driver software. Click on “Install this driver software anyway”. After a while it installs. It pops up a box stating that “Windows has successfully updated your driver software”, then another that it didn’t because it was not digitally signed, then another that says ND-tech USB adapter, this device installed properly. When you see that last message about the ND-tech USB adapter, X out of all the remaining pop ups. This driver for the ND-tech USB adapter is I believe the same one found in the .\w64 folder. My copies of Windows seem to have this Cypress driver already available so it finds it automatically.
5. Next install the software application. Double click on the DDC264EVM folder on the Desktop. Double click on the Software folder. Double click on setup.exe. Two warnings pop up. Ignore the Program Compatibility Assistant pop up for the moment. In the Application Install – Security Warning pop up it says the publisher cannot be verified. Click the Install button and it installs. Then a Microsoft .NET framework unhandled exception pops up, click the Continue button. The DDC264 Evaluation then runs (but it doesn’t have a required component yet). Close the application by clicking the X button. Click the Cancel button on the Program Compatibility Assistant pop up.
6. Next a .dll file needs to be copied to a particular location. This location seems to vary between the two systems I tried this on. It may depend on how Windows 7 is set up, I’m not sure. Using Start>Computer to open Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\users\(YOUR USER NAME or maybe CURRENT_USER)\AppData\Roaming (or Local)\Apps\2.0\(a random series of letters and numbers\(another random series of letter and numbers\ddc2…tion_(even more random letters and numbers). You may have to hunt around to find this. Also, you must have Explorer set up to show hidden files and folders. Note that there is also another similar adjacent folder that starts with \ddc2…exe_xxx, don’t use that one. Double click on the DDC264EVM folder on the Desktop and a second Explorer screen pops up. Double click on Drivers. While holding the Ctrl key down, take the file “USB_IO_for_VB6.dll” and drag a copy to the C:\users\....... \ddc2…tion_xxx folder in the first Explorer window. Close the Explorer windows. Note that this step 6 and step 5 may be in a reverse order to the way it is described in other places.
7. Believe it or not, that’s it. Go to Start>Programs>Texas Instruments>DDC264 Evaluation and the program will now run correctly. To test it, click the Refresh All button in the upper right. When it finishes, it should say “Refreshed” in the lower left corner.
This is what worked for me. I tried this procedure with two different Dell lap tops, one a Precision M4400 running W7 Professional, Service Pack 1, the other a Precision M6400 also with W 7 Pro, SP 1. I haven’t tried the standard install with XP, Vista, or W7 32 bit and nor have I tried the 64 bit install on Windows 8 so I can't comment on those.
I hope you find this helpful. It’s unfortunate that this nice $300 EVM for this useful chip seems to be somewhat of a software orphan. Maybe at some point the EVM could be updated with a small Cortex M-3 processor and provide modern, supported drivers.
-Randy
