Free Flash Utility

Have you tried a different computer?

As a general note some machines have worthless serial ports, resulting in either failed communication or a lot of resends.

Thank you for the hint, but the commercial tool Flashit could establish a serial connection and read out some configuration values from HW, so I think the physical communication is possible.

Today, I have get the first serial connection with MiniMon, I have tried several different Baudrates and 38400 works. Additional special vaues for SYSCON (0x0084) and BUSCON0 (0x04AD) is required. But enabling the flashs with my configuration do not work, no serial connection could be established if I have enabled the Flashs.

I'm using the 2 x Flashs as address/data multiplexed (16-bit width) and the C164 is clocked with 16MHz.

Do anyone can give me the correct setups for SYSCON, BUSCONx and Memory setup that I can program the Flashs ?

And I found the Flash tool from Phyton:
www.phytec.com/.../flash-tools-downloads.html
, is it possible to use it ? Do anyone have experience with it ?

Thank you for any hint,
Sammy

Hallo!

Please note, even FlashIt may not work on your particular machine! - As it was with my Dell laptop's built-in COM-port and FlashIt v.8.8x. However, I solved the problem by using an USB-to-RS232 adapter. It may make sense for you first try a good USB/UART adapter with those free s/w tools you have already tried. "Good" means many adapters have problems :-(. I used many of them and found one from Prolific works perfectly (and, e.g. with latest adapter from Quatech I still have problems at higher baud-rates). Be aware, many s/w have problem with re-establishing serial communication, and it is worth to: a) "clean" the port using e.g. dummy session of hyperterminal window, b) do "unplug-plug" cycle for your USB/UART adapter, especially if you have left the PC for a long time so it could be back after being in a sleep mode.

A FlashTools 3 Beta from PHYTEC is deserved to try out.

See also the thread http://www.keil.com/forum/docs/thread11077.asp, which discusses COM-port issues. THEY DO REALLY EXIST!

Regards,
Nikolay.

Hallo,

I have solved my problems :-) Thank you very much for all your helps. I have used the free available port monitor from Microsoft (prev. Sysinternals): www.microsoft.com/.../Portmon.mspx
Very good tool to trace everything on all serial ports. It showed to me that I do not have serial communication problems, if I use the correct Baudrate (38500, for 16MHz clocked device). To figure this out was really try and error.
After that I could use the Flashit tool to get the SYSCON and BUSCON settings. Configuring these values into the Infineon Memtool, the tool works. I do not understand why they always say it is just for internal flash, it is not true. There is even a configuration specialised for a board with C164 and 2 times external AMD29F010B flashes. I hope this information will be useful.

By the way there exist a new version of the virtual serial port simulator com0com (FREE) with a nice GUI see: com0com.sourceforge.net/

When starting with a new microprocessor, I always recommend that the baudrates are verified with an oscilloscope. That will catch any "odd" baudrates caused by incorrect initialization of the processor or the baudrate generator.

I always verify timers, I2C, SPI, ... with an oscilloscope, just in case I have made a mistake that would result in marginal operation.

It is a good point, to use the scope. Just make it clearer: in some cases even with a correct baud rate set at a host side (e.g. PC) you may not have bootstrapping connection established. A reason is in too large baudrate error at MCU side, where the UART is automatically adjusted by h/w. For example, if you are trying to connect at 57600 bps to C16x running at 10 MHz, it will fail since MCU's baudrate would be too different (error ~ 9%), etc. I have not it verified so not sure whether MCU will reply at all. If yes, then you can catch the MCU identification byte (response) with "odd" timing.