Greetings,
I recently purchased a new MSP-FET430UIF version 1.4a as part of the MSP-FET430U40A bundle and had trouble using it in CCS v5.2. I was sure it had been bricked (through no fault of my own), but ultimately resurrected it and thought I would mention this to you members of the E2E community. I'm just starting out with the MSP30 line and perhaps this post will help others avoid the frustration I had to endure. It's always difficult starting out with a new platform, and you want to concentrate on your application, not the tools! Anyway, here's what happened.
When I started a debug session, CCS insisted that the firmware was out of date (on this brand new unit) and offered to upgrade. I proceeded through the various dialogs and the process seemed to be progressing, but got stuck at about 97% of the way through, with the dialog box showing "Updating Firmware: programming New Firmware...(TI MSP430 USB1/MSP430)(Cannot be canceled)". The process just hung, and after an hour or so, reluctantly, and fearing bricking the FET, I saw no option other than quitting CCS (it did quit OK, CCS itself was not hung).
I tried this a second time with the same results. One of the dialogs along the way says it's erasing the firmware. The red and green LED's where both dark throughout the process, except they were illuminated when I first plugged in the FET and before starting the "upgrade". I was sure the new unit was "bricked", and what a pain - RMAs, returns, dealing with my own company's red tape and purchasing department rules are just not worth it for an $80 item.
Yet, I wanted it to work. I hadn't done anything wrong, just followed the on-screen prompts. I didn't unplug the FET while upgrading, nor have a power glitch, nor shut off my Windoze computer. It just didn't work for me. I tried upgrading CCS to version 5.3, the latest version, and a third attempt at updating the firmware failed. I was not instilled with confidence.
Finally, I sent a support email to TI and was surprised to have a real person contact me within a day. I had several email exchanges with "Billy" and he suggested that I download TI's command line flasher. At first, I thought this tool was just a standalone tool for flashing a target device and Billy didn't understand the problem. But I finally took his advice and downloaded the MSP430 flasher CLI tool:
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_Flasher_-_Command_Line_Programmer
Instructions about upgrading the FET firmware for this tool are vague. What firmware file was I supposed to point the tool to in order to upgrade the FET, and how did I tell CLI program that I was trying to update firmware on the FET itself and not a target device? I fiddled around a bit, and came to the conclusion that the firmware is built into the flasher or one of its components. After several attempts, I discovered that a minimal command line such as: MSP430Flasher.exe -n MSP430FG4619 was sufficient (pick any supported device since we're not really targeting a device, but the FET itself). The tool found the FET and said it's firmware was out of date (just like CCS did). I typed Y at the prompt to upgrade it. This got about 97% through the process...initializing, erasing, erasing, programming...97% and then FAILED just like in CCS! I really thought the FET was hosed.
But something did happen. The power light on the FET was thereafter illuminated, and Windoze detected a new device and went through it's automatic driver discovery and installation successfully. So I tried the same CLI command once again and this time the command ran successfully. Back in CCS 5.3, the debugger found the FET tool and now seemed happy, and flashed my target device with no problems. I could then run the program and set breakpoints through JTAG with my little ZIF breakout board.
Overall, a very frustrating experience that cost hours of time. Yet, in the end all is well.
TI's support was surprisingly good, in that there was a real human on the other end of the emails who was apologetic, sympathetic and helpful. But I would say that TI engineering has a lot of work to do in fixing this process. My computer is a relatively modern Dell T7500 workstation, lots of memory and disk space, running Windoze 7 64 bit, with vastly enough processing power to handle this simple upgrade task without a hiccup, and no problems with any other applications.
No one wants to spend time jumping through these kind of hoops to get up and running with a new processor. You just want things to work and not have to fiddle with the tools. You can see that TI is trying to provide low cost, simple tools to entice us to recommend their processors. Yet, this upgrade process is flawed and TI should reevaluate what's going on here, and provide a process that is as virtually "brick proof" as possible.
On another note, I have used the low cost MSP-EXP430FR5739 board with its built in USB FET tool and CCS, and that worked remarkably smoothly. My goal in purchasing and using the FET is to design my own, minimal MSP-430 controller circuit using an external programmer to flash and debug it. It seems the MSP-FET430UIF tool is the way to do that, and I was surprised to run into such difficulties considering that the low cost solution worked so well.
Oh, and by the way, although these discussions are helpful they can also be frustrating. Lot's of dead-end paths and twisty passages! In my searching it seems others have run into similar issues and the TI guy I was corresponding with admitted such. TI should get on it and address this problem ASAP to save the next poor guy the trouble. As helpful as "Billy" was, it's still my time that was being wasted, and there's nothing more valuable to me.
That's it, happy coding!