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Old MSP-FET430UIF vs New MSP-FET (black)

San Badger Dude
Prodigy 250 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: MSP-FET, MSP430FG4618, MSP430F5529

I am new to microcontrollers (Student) and have purchased my own MSP430FG4618/F2013 board and MSP-FET flash emulator. I am unable to get my programs to flash like they do at school. The main difference is I have a newer version of flash emulator (Black) and we use an older version at school (white). I have the COM ports and baud rates on my pc all setup the same. What could I be overlooking?

LED's on board seem to work fine. Switches seem to work... Serial and Buzzer do not! 

Any ideas are greatly appreciated.... again I am very new to this.

Thank you

  • 0
    Guru 23000 points

    I think it must be possible with the new FET, but no experience with this combination.

    The board has two JTAG connectors, use the right one. Check also jumpers and power connection.

    What error message do you get?

  • 0 in reply to Leo Bosch
    Guru 14640 points

    I found that the newer msp-fet would work with the latest tools (in my case IAR 6.20), but not with older tools (IAR 5.51).

    The older msp-fet430uif would work with either IAR 5.51 and IAR 6.20, but an update in firmware was required.

    I suspect it is the same with Code Composer Studio...

  • 0 in reply to Todd Anderson78572
    Guru 227245 points
    Yes. The MSP-FET (black) is completely different hardware (faster, more features) and support for it was added only in the latest tools. No support for it will be added for older versions of the tools, and since it is different hardware, downgrading the firmware won't work, as there is no firmware ever written for the older tool versions.
    Maybe a high demand from the owners of older compiler versions who don't want to update the compiler when their old FET430UIF fails, may convince TI to write backwards compatible firmware, but currently there is none.
  • 0 in reply to Jens-Michael Gross
    Prodigy 250 points
    I use IAR 6.20.1. Would that be of any benefit? Let me show my ignorance here. I guess I just assumed that a typical 'C' program written for the MSP430FG4618 would still work for a newer version of debugger. Maybe I just need to find an old debugger?
  • 0 in reply to San Badger Dude
    Guru 14640 points

    Although I am using an MSP430F5529, the steps should be the same:

    When I plug in the MSP-FET to my system, I get a "Driver Software Installation" message. It progresses from "Searching Windows Upate..." to "Ready to Use."  COMxx may be different on your system:

       Installing device driver software

       USB Composite Device                           Ready to use

       MSP Debug Interface (COM19)              Ready to use

       MSP Application UART1 (COM18)         Ready to use

     

    I then brought up IAR 6.20, and loaded a Blink example, built it, and attempted to download onto my target board. At that point, I received another message stating "Emulator   The firmware on the MSP-FET430UIF / MSP-FET / ez-FET emulator does not match this software version. Do you want to udate it (this may require several update steps)?   I chose Yes.

    Another window popped up "Busy" 

        Starting debugger session: Loading debug file  [This was intially blank.]

        Emulator: Programming New Firmware... [This was a bar graph that eventually went to 100%.]

     

    Once the emulator firmware was updated, then IAR was able to download the example code and showed that I was at the first line of "main."

    Hopefully, that helps. (I tried to cut and paste the actual windows into this reply, but "Paste from Word" did not work for the windows...)

     

  • 0 in reply to San Badger Dude
    Guru 227245 points
    " I guess I just assumed that a typical 'C' program written for the MSP430FG4618 would still work for a newer version of debugger."
    It's not the code, it is the low-level hardware support of accessing the FET for writing the compiled code to the target CPU.
    The code generated by the compiler might be the same. Or not, as the compilers are constantly improved to generated faster and shorter code from the same source. Also, project files and options may change with compiler/toolchain versions.

    Well, what are the exact error messages you receive? And when do you receive them? And which compiler version do you use at school?

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