How do I get UART functionality through the MSP-FET430UIF - VCP USB driver?

The FETs may or may not implement an applicaiton UART (also called 'backchannel UART'). This application UART uses the otherwise unused port pins of the TUSB chip (that connects the FETs internal MSP to the PC) for a bit-banging secondary UART channel. This channel usually is limited to 9600Bd.
To use this, the connection between FET and target MSP needs to provide the necessary two lines (rx/tx).
This is true for mayn experimenter boards with internal FET (FR5x, LaunchPad), but not for all. And needs to be supported by the TUSB firmware.

Whether the PC provides a VCP for the applicaiton UART depends on the ID of the TUSB chip and the driver loaded by the PC then.

Also, conflicts with the used/assigned COM ports may prevent the VCP to appear or to work properly. If you use different FETs, you should manually assign them individual COM numbers in the device manager, or else differen instances may shadow each other

(COM port enumeration is a dark chapter in Windows since Win95. And has grown even darker for the 64bit versions).

Is there any way to know which TUSB chip IDs support the application UART?

Can the TUSB firmware be upgraded by the user to include the application UART?

Anthony Fontana said:

Is there any way to know which TUSB chip IDs support the application UART?

Anthony Fontana said:

Can the TUSB firmware be upgraded by the user to include the application UART?

On this wiki page it doesn't read like there is a backchannel UART for the MSP430UIF as there is no driver mentioned for that functionality.

Hey Anthony. Sorry to budge into your thread, but I saw that you are using the MSP-FET430UIF on windows 7 x64. I'm currently trying to get that to work, but I keep getting the "no usb fet found" error in Code Composer Studio. Did you have this problem? I tried to manually select the "USB_FET_WIN7_64" folder through the driver installation, but windows fails to find the necessary driver. Also, when I plug in my debugger it just turns on the green power LED, the red never flashes or anything (I assume because the drivers aren't installed). Did you have to do anything special to get the device to work?

Do you or any posters here have any ideas for this?

I'm also using Windows 7 x64 and I have no troubles at all (no special thing done to get it work). Also the LEDs are controlled by the firmware and not the drivers.

Q: How can I tell whether my MSP-FET430 was updated to the MSP430.DLLv3 or not?

A1: When you connect the interface, the LEDs will show which version you are using:
Older, un-updated interfaces will blink: red-red-red-green (green remains on)
 Updated v3 interfaces will just light up the green LED, when connecting to the PC

Garrett,

I'm using IAR not CCS.  Initially, it did report "not found" when trying to debug but I could also tell the Windows driver wasn't working in Device Manager.  I did some searching and found a recommendation to upgrade IAR to bring in newer drivers.  After the upgrade, everything worked fine.