The everything programmer

XCore Project reviews, ideas, videos and proposals.
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Gravis
Experienced Member
Posts: 75
Joined: Thu Feb 02, 2012 3:32 pm

The everything programmer

Post by Gravis »

Status: Just an idea
License: GPL

There seem to be programmer for just about every type of MCU out there and they all seem to have their own protocols, so why not be smart and make a bit-banged programmer (XMOS to save the day!) that can program anything? Obviously you would need to be able to switch between I/O, VCC (adjustable) and GND for every pin (so many demultiplexers!) for a ZIF and PLCC sockets. There are also plenty of in-circuit pluggable interfaces with their own size connectors and configurations that would be "easy" to add. A USB interface that would specify the configuration and send the data would make it (at least the ZIF and PLCC sockets) future-proof. With that many I/Os needed, an IO expander IC sounds like a good idea and would require running a protocol over another protocol (yay XMOS!). The pluggable cable interfaces could be used with a debugger on the XMOS chip too.
It would be complicated but it would be one programmer to rule them all.


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franksanderdo
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Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2011 6:19 pm

Post by franksanderdo »

Hi Ho,

just the last days I have started to work on a (JTag) Debugger for AVR Chips. As I don't have jet to much experience with On Circuit Debugging as well as AVR as well as XMOS Programming, my plans are to make first some Communication between AVR and XMOS (Just for learning).
The second step then will be to transfer one of the existing Open Source Debbuger solutions on XMOS.
What I have learned so far:
Each and every Supplier has its own Protokoll to the MCU as well as his own Protocol to the IDE / PC Tools.
So far the best documented ones I could find was OpenOCD.
Lets see what the next Days bring ;-)
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