• State Resolved
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 8 replies
  • Subscribers 33 subscribers
  • Views 1502 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Support feedback
Options
Options
Similar topics

This thread has been locked.

If you have a related question, please click the "Ask a related question" button in the top right corner. The newly created question will be automatically linked to this question.

Original question:

TPS65981: TPS6598x, Application Cutomization tool, FTDI

TPS65987-90EVM: TPS6598x, Application Cutomization tool, FTDI

Doug Burton55
Prodigy 90 points

Part Number: TPS65987-90EVM

I have a TPS65987-90EVM, and I cannot get the FTDI to I2C working. I'm running TPS6598x Application Customization Tool version 4.01. I've tried all 3 versions of the driver that came with the software. I've even downloaded the latest driver version directly from FTDI.  I'm running Windows 7 Professional SP1.  I am plugged into the micro-USB port, and I can see all 4 of the COM ports in the device manager. I've tried changing the settings on the port as recommended in another forum topic, but that didn't help either. The app says there are no FTDI I2C channels detected.  Can I get some help here?

  • 0
    Prodigy 90 points
    Some additional info: we just used an FTDI utility to read the EEPROM for configuring the FTDI device, and it is blank. Shouldn't it have something programmed in it to set up the ports for SPI and I2C?
  • 0 in reply to Doug Burton55
    Prodigy 90 points

    I asked my local software expert to give me a hand with this issue; here is his response:

    I wrote a program to call the FTDI I2C library to see what was going on with the TPS65987-90EVM module.

     There is a bug in the newer versions of the FTDI driver that causes the FTDI I2C library to not detect any devices.  I recognized this issue as soon as I saw it – we had to modify our code at my previous employer to sidestep this same problem.  The FTDI D2XX library function FT_GetDeviceInfoList() function always returns 0 for the device location (LocId) as the I2C library scans through all the FTDI channels.  The four LSBs of the location are supposed to be “1” for channel A, “2” for channel B, “3” for channel C and “4” for channel D on an FT4232H device.  The I2C library checks this because only channels A and B on an FT4232H device support the MPSSE engine which is needed for I2C operation.  Since it never sees a “1” or a “2”, it doesn’t think any I2C-capable devices are present.  FYI, I think the SerialNumber field could be used instead to identify the channel, since it is the string “A”, “B”, “C” or “D”, as appropriate.

     

    The EEPROM on the FT4232H does not need to be programmed.  However, if it were programmed so that only the D2XX driver were loaded (and not the virtual COM port driver), then Windows wouldn’t chew up serial ports that you couldn’t use anyway.

     

    In any case, here is how I was able to get the evaluation module working on my laptop running Windows 7:

     

         C:

         cd “C:\Program Files\Texas Instruments\TPS65981_2_6_7 Application Customization 4_01\drivers\ftdi”

        

         rem *** this program uninstalls any currently loaded FTDI drivers for the specified VID and PID

         rem *** 0403 6011 is the default VID and PID for the FTDI FT4232H

         CDMUninstaller 0403 6011

     

         rem *** this program installs the oldest version of the FTDI driver that came with the evaluation module

         cdm20802_setup

     

                    (and reboot your PC as instructed after installing the new driver)

     

    The 2.08.24 and 2.12.26 versions of the FTDI driver that came with the evaluation module do not work any better.

    Also, the latest driver from the FTDI website (2.12.28) does not help.

     

    Only the 2.08.02 version of the driver will work with this program.

     

    TI would need to modify the source code of the FTDI-provided I2C library used by their program to get around this issue.

    The source code is available for download from the FTDI website.

    Or, they could use the D2XX library directly and avoid using the I2C library, but that’s more complicated.

     

    I hope this helps anyone who has been struggling with this issue.

  • 0
    TI__Expert 5760 points

    Doug,

    Thanks for your inputs on this. I will pass this along to our GUI team. What I have found on my system is that, when I am using a docking station or a USB hub, I see behavior very similar to what you see. You can try connecting the USB directly to the PC port and see if that helps.

    -Ghouse

  • 0 in reply to Ghouse Mohiuddin23
    Prodigy 90 points
    Ghouse, I am already directly connected to the PC USB port, and I even tried changing ports. It made no difference until we rolled back the driver to the earliest version.

    We also found that if we installed the config tool to a Windows 10 laptop and tried it, it worked fine without having to make any driver changes. So the problem seems to be an FTDI driver issue with Windows 7.
  • 0 in reply to Doug Burton55
    Prodigy 90 points
    Here is a document from FTDI that describes the exact problem we were experiencing with the FTDI device drivers:

    www.ftdichip.com/.../TN_152_USB_3.0_Compatibility_Issues_Explained.pdf

    The issue is described in section 2.1.2 “Location ID Returned As 0”.

    In short, the issue only occurs in versions of Windows prior to Windows 8, and only if you plug the FTDI device into a USB 3.x port on your PC. So, you could use the latest FDTI driver on your Windows 7 PC if you always plugged the FTDI USB interface into a USB 2.x port. I verified this on my own Windows 7 laptop – it would work on the USB 2.x port and not work on the USB 3.x port.

    However, if it works with the 2.08.02 driver, then I’m not sure why it has to be broken with newer drivers. If they filled out the lower four bits of the location ID to at least identify the FTDI device channel (which they should know regardless of the USB 3.0 driver issues mentioned in the document), then the existing FTDI I2C library would still work. We should encourage FTDI to update their own I2C library to address this problem. I think their SPI and JTAG libraries also exhibit the same issue.

    This document also describes in section 2.1.1 that some users may have trouble even installing the device when it is connected to a USB 3.x port on a pre-Windows-8 PC. Sounds like TI could avoid this issue by programming a serial number into the EEPROM attached to the FT4232H device.
  • 0 in reply to Doug Burton55
    TI__Intellectual 1960 points

    could you try the instruction attached and see(one of our apps engineers wrote this up and it's been working on multiple Windows 7 based systems)?  In case of Windows 7, you may have to replace the driver with one of  the drivers below especially if you have previously installed FTDI driver(the highlighted version worked for me).  It seems the latest is not always not the greatest for FTDI driver installation…7851.FTDI Driver install.pdf

  • 0 in reply to Yoon Lee
    Prodigy 90 points

    Yes, thank you. I believe if you read through all of my posts, you will see that (1) we finally got an older version of the driver to work, (2) there is a known bug with the later FTDI drivers in conjunction with USB3 ports and Windows 7.

  • 0 in reply to Doug Burton55
    TI__Intellectual 1960 points
    Yes. Thanks for sharing. Seems to be the same version of the driver. Sorry we didn't get to share this earlier. We will work with the GUI team and make a note in the documentation