On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 9:28 PM, <dan...@tortek.co.nz> wrote: > Hi John, > > For each chip, the FET requires a record containing information such > as: > > - the extent of info, code and RAM addresses > - the number of available breakpoints > - the type of flash memory controller > - the existence of peripherals which might interfere with debugging > > To say that a chip is "supported" means that MSPDebug has in its > database a record of the type described above, plus ID information > (this is fet_db.c). This only applies to versions of the firmware >= > 20300000. > > In older versions, this database is contained within the FET firmware > itself. This is why old firmware can't be used to debug all > MSP430s. > > If you have a newer version of the firmware and MSPDebug doesn't > support your chip, sometimes you can get away with forcing the use of > a record for a chip which is close enough. You just need to ensure > that the memory extent of the chip you select is a superset of the one > you're actually using, because the FET will perform range checks on > flash writes. > > Cheers, > Daniel
Hi Daniel, Thanks for clearing this up for me and thanks also to JM for the additional clarification. I guess the older versions of FET firmware and IAR were shielding me from these issues, which is why I was confused now. But it all makes sense. Again, it seems so obvious in retrospect. > If you have a newer version of the firmware and MSPDebug doesn't > support your chip, sometimes you can get away with forcing the use of > a record for a chip which is close enough. This raises another question - how would I do this? Would I use the "--fet-force-id" flag? Would I follow this with the chip ID (e.g. '0xf227' for a MSP430F2274) that resides at 0x0FF0-0x0FF1 in the target device (also documented in "Features of the MSP430 Bootstrap Loader", slaa089d.pdf)? If so, boy was I way off base confusing this id with the FET protocol version! At this point these questions are mostly academic, since the chips I'm interested in are already supported. But inquiring minds want to know! I've been researching as I compose this message and I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track. Confirmation would be appreciated, though. Regards, John
