Windows 7

[kochevnik]

Update for the TLDR crowd : This was not a Basic chip or Basic Tools problem, this was just a problem with the cheap ebay USB/rs232 cards I was using to do programming with - for some reason they just dont work in Win7.

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So I installed a version of windows 7 on one of my computers - everything else seems to work, except of course for Basic Tools - the one thing I need the most right now.

I have another machine with winXP - I switch my FTDI card & cable & Basic chip hardware setup to the XP machine, works fine, switch to the Win7 machine and when the Basic Tools window opens, I get a blank screen. When I go to program it says "Analyzing something.bas" then stops with no "+*+*" or showing up. If I hit the reset button I get a messagebox with "Buttons" in the title and "Program being downloaded, please wait."

I hooked up my scope to the DTR pin feeding into the reset on the BasicChip and the signals look the same, 3 times the signal drops from 5v down to 0v, twice for short times, once for a little longer - and as noted below, the reset seems to be working fine.

Basictools 5.19 ARM Basic 8.27a on both computers. The FTDI driver is a little different on both machines, the XP has a 2009 driver and the Win7 machine I tried drivers from 2013 and 2010 (could not find the 2009 driver yet). I can also mention that when I program the BasicChip from the xp machine to send a "Hello" message once a second, then hook it up to the win 7 serial port, it looks like the Win7 machine is getting a message as the cursor advances across the screen every second, but no Hello appears. Baud rate is set to 19,200 in the menu, and I tried resetting the latency under advanced options for the serial port (recommended on another site). No joy.

Suggestions ?

[kochevnik]

More data : I took the whole setup to work this morning, my work computer is win7 Pro home one is WinTPC (a stripped down version of windows 7). Plugged everything in - same behavior, and the work computer has Basictools 5.17/8.23a

The demo mode works compiles and runs fine. Also, when I hit the reset button, the Basicchip IS actually resetting as I have a short program on one of the chips that flashes an led for 10 seconds then turns off - so I can actually SEE the reset happening and it works fine. The drivers always say they are loaded and no issues, and they show up as the appropriate com port all the time, no problems reported there. Just wont program / communicate with the chip.

[basicchip]

You are the only one reporting something like this. I am only running on either win 7 or win 8 these days.

Rather than trying all the old combinations, it is better to download the latest copy to your win 7 machine and to update your driver. I'll try on my win 7 machine.

It is best to debug when we are all on the same page.

[basicchip]

PS make sure all the other drivers on your PC are up to date. Another user reported out of date USB drivers (not FTDI) caused issues on a system.

[kochevnik]

Well if no one else has the problem, must be something on my end. The FTDI drivers for both the USB and for the serial port are from July 12 2013 and the BasicTools is the latest version downloaded last night. The Win7 installs are all brand new or pretty new. I do have a prety long (new) cable on the usb, I'll try changing that. If you're running win7 all the time and no problems, then dont waste any of your time on this, it has to be on my end somewhere.

Thx.

[kochevnik]

It looks like it's the FTDI cards I have (or the driver in combination) that have a problem with Win7.

I swapped all the FTDI USB serial cards I have in and none of them worked on win7, swapped cables, wires etc. I did get two SiLabs cards to communicate with the Bchip but it wont program because the reset isnt working on those cards - I think the signal needs to be inverted - I'll look at it on the scope tonight.

So can you tell me a little more about the programming process and what takes place when you open Basic Tools ? I did read the help sections about the 500 ms to get a 27 or 3 character sent. I just want to make sure I understand the whole thing correctly.

1) open Basic Tools
2) Basic Tools sends a reset to the Bchip (pulls pin low)
3) Bchip resets, waiting 500 ms for either 3 or 27 on received on Rx pin (@19200 baud)
4) Basic Tools sends a 3 or a 27 and the Bchip goes into 'programming mode' and waits for more data from Basic Tools

Question here : does either the Bchip or the Basic Tools do any other communicating at this point ? I know there is a message when you open BasicTools on the first open window - is that from the connected Bchip or somewhere else ?

5) next, the user loads their programming file in BasicTools, then it gets compiled/processed into a file ready for programming the Bchip, then that compiled file gets sent out @ 19200 baud

6) When the Bchip receives the data it stores overwrites the memory where programs are stored.

What happens after the file is sent to the Bchip ? Is there any special characters sent by either BasicTools or the Bchip to indicate that programming is completed ?

7) And now the user either types run or resets the chip and the program they loaded is fired off.

Did I miss anything ? I'm going to need to look at all this on my scope/analyzer to see where these USB serial cards are going wrong so I need a good understanding of the entire process. Anything I missed please let me know.

Thx
Matt

[basicchip]

As I said you are the only report of this and there are hundreds if not thousands now of Win 7 installations.

So steps I would take-
- something in FTDI driver -- make sure it is the latest, check the ftdichip site, if it is newer than 2.8.28 let me know and I'll update mine in the installer (I only check periodically)
- something in your other drivers including USB, USB hub... -- check with the PC vendor website and make sure you have all the updates.
- try moving the assigned COM port, long long ago in XP I encountered a non-plug and play board that showed up in the same address space as the COM port the ftdi driver was trying to use and it conflicted with the ftdi serial. You can reassign that number in the Device Manager advanced options for the USB Serial device -> Port Settings -> Advanced
- try a different win 7 machine
- it could be an FTDI card that has gone bad, though if it still works on the XP machine, that is a bit hard to believe. I'd still opt for something wrong with the PC or its drivers.

As for what happens when it is being programmed
-As you have outlined the steps BASICtools go through on startup is to reset the card and send a ESC character to tell BASIC firmware to not start the user BASIC program
-You should see the "Welcome ..." message coming back. You might see this if the BASIC program does not exist or is very short also. This validates at least one way communication with the board
-BASICtools sends a ? which the board responds with a list of vectors (about 100 or so 4 digit hex numbers). These are used to link to routines in the firmware. You can type a ?<enter> on the Enter: line and should see those coming back, if you don't then there is some issue with data going from the PC to the serial port
- after that the %temp%\Coridium\__temp.out file is sent to the board, which contains symbol table information and the hex program data. During this time BASICtools sends a * for each block and the board responds with + as it is programmed into Flash

As you are not seeing the *, I suspect the board is not responding to the ? and there is some issue with sending data from the PC. Though there is a timeout on that in BASICtools and you should see an Unable to communicate message popup window.

[kochevnik]

Just wanted to update this - it is definitely the (cheap ebay) FTDI cards I have - I hooked two of them up to each other and looked at them in RealTerm and all they see is nulls whenever data is sent to them.

So nothing to do with the BasicChip or the BasicTools. I have a bunch of other cards and USB serial plugs, I will see if I can get them to work.

Thx for the help and the info.