Part Number: MSP-FET430UIF
I reported an issue where CCS was unable to detect my MSP-FET430UIF and although I followed the recommendations which were given to me by TI support, I could not resolve this.
I am currently using MSP-FET430UIF together with a MSP430F4618 Experimenter board.
I am using an Ubuntu 19.10 laptop with the latest msp-elf-gcc toolchain (8.3.0.16)
After jumping through a number of hoops, I managed to get everything running correctly, using mspdebug and am now in the process of trying to configure my own custom Emacs-based IDE, with a bunch of packages, since CCS is a no-go for me and caused my laptop to crash.
I am now faced with an extremely ugly situation, whereby, it has become apparent to me that the MSP-FET430UIF tool has somehow damaged the bootstrap loader in the MSP430F2013 on the experimenter board.
I have read a number of articles regarding similar issues, in which it appears that the security fuse has blown, however, it is a matter of a mass erase of the on-chip flash being necessary.
Since the MSP430F2013 does not have a serial UART, the recommend methods of connecting a special circuit and correcting this issue, is not possible.
As a result, I decided to switch to a second, identical, brand-new MSP430F4618 Experimenter board.
Since my objective, at this stage, has only been to get my toolchain and debug environment working reliably, I have only used a simple blink.c to do my testing with:
#include <msp430x20x3.h>
int main(void) {
WDTCTL = WDTPW | WDTHOLD; // Stop watchdog timer
P1DIR |= 0x01; // Set P1.0 to output direction
for(;;) {
volatile unsigned int i; // volatile to prevent optimization
P1OUT ^= 0x01; // Toggle P1.0 using exclusive-OR
i = 10000; // SW Delay
do i--;
while(i != 0);
}
return 0;
}
I was doing some testing, using MSPDEBUG as stub, and connecting GDB.
After a number of tests, setting breakpoints, running and just getting used to the commands and options, I noticed that, every time I loaded the blink.out and ran it, it looked like a breakpoint was set and was halting. I finally rebooted my laptop and power-cycled the board, to find that that the same thing has happened to my second experimenter board.
It is clearly evident to me that the damage has been done by some marginal timing issue, in relation to using the MSP-FET430UIF JTAG together the Spy-bi-Wire interface on the MSP430F2013.
The MSP-FET430UIF tool is revision 1.4a.
I would like to ask TI to please send me a replacement FET tool and two experimenter boards, which work reliably.
Thanking you in advance.
Jonathan Roberts
