MSP430F1101: Any BSL tool to program .a43

MSP-FET can be used for BSL programmer.

For hardware connection, is it enough that we route below six signals from MSP-FET to our target board?

Please also let us know what GUI we can use mode to program .a43 file by BSL mode.

Regards,

Uchikoshi 

Hi Peter,

I installed the latest Uniflash v4.6 and found that the new menu "Bootloader" was added as below. But it seems that BSL supports only F5x/6x and FRAM devices.

Could you please confirm it again?

Regards,

Uchikoshi

Peter, I believe BSLDEMO2 works with the Rocket.  In fact I believe the Rocket was originally designed for BSLDEMO.  I'm not sure about MSP-FET, but Table 1.2 of slau319v.pdf suggests it will work too.

Alternatively, the OP is welcome to use my version of BSLDEMO, which would allow him to use a common USB-to-UART adapter, such as the FT232RL, the CP2102(N), or the CH340G, with the  relevant driver installed.  It's called BSLDEMO-2.01C.exe.

https://github.com/gbhug5a/MSP430-BSL

I added the -i and -j options to invert the polarity of DTR and RTS, respectively, some combination of which should work with those USB adapters.

I don't know about A43 files.  If they are really Intel-HEX, then they would need to be converted to TI-TXT format for BSLDEMO.  On that same repo, there's a VB Script that does that conversion.  It's HEX2TXT.vbs.

Thank you for your proposal. It looks that BSLDEMO2 can work with MSP-FET but could not succeed. Adding to no document for "BSLDEMO2.exe", it seems to require some special command(UART baudrate) to configure MSP-FET to BSL mode. I am not sure how I can configure.

Now I used MSP-GANG instead of MSP-FET and used a GUI for MSP-GANG which can support BSL mode. It looks like working fine at the moment.

For alternative solution, please let us know how to configure MSP-FET to BSL mode for old device like F1101. Below is the capture using BSLDEMO2. I believe the wire connection is correct since MSP-GANG can program it.

Regards,

Uchikoshi

Here's a thread I participated in earlier on this subject:

https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/msp430/f/166/t/735052

He was finally able to get the MSP-FET to generate the hardware invoke sequence by using a terminal program to change the baud rate to 9601.  But in the end, I believe he still had problems getting the process to complete, and apparently never got it to work.

I don't have an MSP-FET, so am unable to experiment.  It's a real shame that TI doesn't have instructions for using MSP-FET with any of the older parts that use BSLDEMO, because they still sell  lot of those.  It's also disappointing that there's no customer here who has managed to get this to work and can tell us how to do it.  But at least you have MSP-GANG that works for you.

For this particular F1101 part, I believe there are additional complications with using BSLDEMO.  It appears a "patch" has to be loaded.  See Sections 5.1 and 5.2 of slau319v.pdf.  So it appears MSP-GANG will be your best solution.

Gents,

to give you brief update. The root cause of the problem seems to be the entry sequence for the BSL.

We have tested it with an old no longer available tool for RS232 interface. There the Demo example works. The difference we found so far, is the entry sequence, comparing it with the BSL rocket.

Please see here the different sequences

This is the entry sequence with the old tool.

And this the sequence applied by the BSL rocket.

We'll try to fix this, but it will probably take some time, as for the release, we need to go through testing it for other devices and GUIs....

A potentially other option would be, to use another controller, which would load the image through USB from the PC, and than generate all the necessary signals for the download to the target. There is an application report describing this, but we have not tested this within the MSP430 tools department.

Still maybe worth trying e.g. with the MSP432 LP MSP-EXP432P401R. The mentioned application report can be found on the MSP430 BSL homepage 

Best regards

Peter

Peter, I don't understand. Does the first scope image show what the MSP-FET produces as the hardware invocation pattern? I don't see how that could work for any part, even the new ones. It only has one pulse on Test, which doesn't match any of the valid patterns in slau319 and 550. Is that the pattern it produces even with BSL-Scripter and the newer parts?