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TUSB9260: Custom firmware possible?

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: TUSB9260

I've submitted a service request on this about a week and a half ago, but haven't heard anything back, so I thought I'd try here. (Service request 1-707218642 )

We've implemented a TUSB9260 into a design here: The part is being used to interface to a SATA DVD drive from a HS USB port on a Windows XP based embedded system. (This replaces an IDE DVD drive that is going EOL.)

We have an issue with our manufacturing process that perhaps could be solved with custom firmware for the TUSB9260.  We manufacture our systems using a "ghosting" process for the hard drives: A working system is essentially cloned and "ghosted" onto the hard drive for each new system, (with a subsequent step, of course to install license files and such)  The way our applicaton software works, it expects the DVD drive to show up as Drive E: (there is no drive D: in the system).  Now previously (with the old IDE drive) this worked fine, Windows PnP saw the "same" DVD drive in each new system that was produced, and kept the DVD drive at E:.  Now, however with the TUSB926 + SATA drive, Windows PnP sees a "new" drive in almost every system that is produced, and installs that drive as drive D: in the system.  We have a temporary work-around in production to manually move that drive to E:, but it adds several minutes to the production of each system.  The reason Windows does this, apparently, is that the descriptor string returned by the TUSB9260 chip contains some sort of semi-unique serial number for each individual TUSB9260 chip. (I say semi-unique because occasionally a system will boot up with the drive at E:, indicating that it saw the same id string as the original system)

  Here's a couple of examples of the device ID strings in Windows:

USB\VID_0451&PID_9260\4057D01520110720131015250DA2C38FA

USB\VID_0451&PID_9260\3FACE06C20110720132221687DA2C38FA

As you can see, some parts of the string stay the same ("2011072013" and "DA2C38FA").  and some don't.

So is it possible to get a version of the firmware that always returns the same idstring?

Thanks.

 

  • Hello Charles,

    As you said, the id string contains a unique serial number which is updated every time you burn the firmware into the TUSB9260, this is a security check in order to avoid programming two 9260 with the same serial number.

    The Drive Letter (E: or D:) is assigned to each hard drive, I'm going to forward this issue to the software experts.

    Regards.

     

  • Any word from the software folks on this?

    Charlie

  • Attached is a Firmware version that configures the disk as a removable media and fixes the problem with the drive letters.

    Regards.

    3463.TUSB9260_FW97_removableMedia.rar

  • I'm also interested if the FW customizable.  The description says "Customizable Application Code". I'm looking to control the GPIO and SPI -> LCD via SCSI command interface. I have found any SDK or application note on how to this.

    Thanks,

    Truong

  • Elias:

    I'm afraid that the downloadable you sent didn't do the trick.  Here was my test for see if this would work:

    I programmed two copies of the interface board (with the TUSB9260) using your new "removableMedia" downloadable.

    I put one of these into a system with it's attached DVD drive, changed it in Windows from Drive D: to Drive E:, then rebooted the system to confirm that it was still at Drive E:.

    Then powered down the system, and swapped the other reprogrammed interface board into the system.  Now I boot up the system, and the drive letter is back to D:.

    Our requirement is that all the interface boards we produce should look identical to Windows PNP so that it will not reset the drive letter when a drive & interface assembly is swapped out.

    Here's another way to look at it:  If I go into the Device manager in Windows and look at the properites of the drive under "USB devices", here's what I see for one of the boards:

    Now If I look at the other board the same way:

    You can see that the two ID strings are different.  I believe this is the root of the problem, as windows builds these ID strings from descriptors it reads from the TUSB9260's registers.  We just need to have every programmed board return the same descriptor.

    Is it possible that I could communicate directly with one of the software developers on this issue?

    Thanks,

    Charlie

  • Hello Charlie,

    Unfortunately that number is the Unique Serial Number assigned when the flash is programmed.

    If two USB devices have the same serial number there could be a conflict with the host controller. This number has to be always unique.

    Regards.

  • In the general USB world, where a USB device can be plugged into any computer, I can see how that could be a problem.  But in this case the DVD drive is imbedded in an OEM medical ultrasound system.  There will only ever be one USB DVD drive on the system at a time.  This might not make the device generally USB compliant, but we don't need it to be.

    Our previous IDE DVD drive had a Cypress chip to interface to it, and we were able to do this with the programming for that chip.

  • Charles,

    Please send me an email to elias.villegas@ti.com

    Regards.