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ProLoad v5.4 Issue

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wuchy143

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Hello All,

This is my first post ever so I hope people respond!!

I"m using ProLoad V5.4 to program Atmel's 89S52 micro. I went to read the bits currently in one of our micro's and it never finishes reading it and the program hangs/crashes. It does say right before it crashes something to the effect that it only got to the first 8 bits or something to that effect. I apologize becuase I never wrote down in my notebook exactly what it said so now I'm going on memory.(ugh..stupid! me) I cannot read the bits from this particular micro. Although I got frustrated and blew new bits into it and now I can read the bits from it without an issue.

Does anyone know what it means when you can't read the bits from a microcontoller. The microcontroller which this is being used for is a military keyboard. The keyboad works fine under normal conditions but when I am doing a certain test it would fail.(keys stop coming out) To make a long story short I tried to read the code to see what was in it and that didn't work. So when I loaded the latest bits into it the keyboard now worked fine under the same test. Also you can read the bits from the micro as well. I did this to four more keyboards and had the exact same result. I'm perplexed. I'm thinking there was bad bits in there..but I'm not sure. Can anyone give me some insight as to what couple potentially be happneng.

Respones will be much appreciated.

Thanks all!!

-mike p
 
If he can write code to it, he should be able to read it. Seems like a strange problem to be having. Is the chip being programmed in system or is it removed from the board? You may be loading the ISP lines on your circuit improperly and it's causing bugs while programming every now and then.
 
wow thanks for such responsive replies!

dknguyen: No. The code was not write protected. I personally did not program the 89S52 origionally so I could be wrong but generally we do not do that where I work.

Sceadwian: I agree. This is a strange problem but it was seen on two units so my suspician was raised. Good guess! I am ISP'ing. What do you mean by loading the ISP lines incorrectly when programming? Do you mean I could have my hardware incorrect for such programming. I took a look at the PCB and I do have the 1N4001 diode about 4 inches from the micro/connector for isp'ing. Do you think not having this diode right at the connector could be causing me pain? FYI I'm using a 4 layer PCB with pwr and GND at layers 3 and 2 respectively. That said I"m not sure if having the diode far away would be an issue. Any thoughts?

-mike p
 
Are you using the ISP pins for any other part of your circuit? Nothing prevents you from doing this if you need the I/O lines but there are limits to what you can drive with those I/O lines without interfering with the ISP process. One thing you may want to try is lowering the speed of your ISP programmer, this can fix many problems and unless you're mass producing them the extra programming time is negligable.

Can you draw out a simple schematic of only the circuitry associated with the ISP lines?
 
Sceadwian: Also, if this where the case where, "You may be loading the ISP lines on your circuit improperly and it's causing bugs while programming every now and then." Could the keyboard still appear to work at times even though I created errors when programming?? I"m not sure if whoever programmed these two keyboards verified the bits after programming but I would hope they did!

The test I'm doing in case anyone is interested in CS115 for mil STD 461. It's electromagnetically coupling a 5amp 30 Hz signal down the cables into the keyboard. They keyboards would stop sending out keys once I reach around an 800V signal. I think it should be able to withstand up to 1200V. I'll have to check the spec.

Also, if you haven't noticed I"m a very novice hardware engineer....who didn't program a microcontroller until after I graduated college. Sad..yes..I know. So please have patience with my ignorance....I"m learning.

Again thanks for the replies. You guys are great!


-mike p
 
Ok. I don't know how to post the jpeg of the ISP. I can email it to you if you'd like?
 
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Woah, when you said testing I thought you were talking about basic software or hardware diagnostics not a hipot test! Apparently those boards aren't really rated for that voltage. You get voltage like that near a micro controller and all sorts of weird things like that can happen easily. Maybe the potentials are gettnig high enough near the chip to screw with the flash memory. Reprogramming will 'refresh it' and it may not happen every time you test it. I would say the maker of the board has some questions to answer if they certified it for that voltage. I don't know much about how you'd shield circuitry from stuff like that so I'm not gonna be much help I don't think =)
 
hmm. Hi-Pot? It's not a true hi pot test i guess. The 30Hz, 1200V, 5A pulses are coupled throught the air to the wires going into the keyboard. Basically you have a device which looks like a donut which connects up to a pulse generator. You thread the keyboard cable thru the donut and that is how the test is done. You're not actually putting 1200 volts onto any signals. Granted I'm sure you see some decont voltage on the line during the time of the pulse. And I would assume you are right. If I did that it's like a lombodomy for a micro...zzzzzzz..electrical death.

Thanks for your input. I'm still confused as to exactly why I couldn't take bits out of the micro using proload. Then once I loaded new bits into the same micro I was able to read them just fine. Without any issues. Whatever code that was origionally in there must have been corrupted in some way. But, the keyboard still worked fine until I started hitting it with the 30HZ pules with that code.

I could be barking up the wrong tree and the failure I'm seeing could have nothing to do with firmware. But, I re-loaded two differnt keyboards and both times it fixed the failure and now I can't get them to fail at all.

It may be time to talk to the boss. :(


-mike p
 
Perhaps when the IC got corrupted one of the things that triggered was the code read back fuse? Generally if that happens the ISP commands go through fine, but all you get back is random garbage.

One off bugs like that are a pain in the butt, cause you can't just dismiss them cause something obviously did go wrong, if you can't repeat the problem that's just irritating, cause you'll always have doubts =)
 
Thanks!

Code readback fuse? Exactly what is that? Interesting. Perhaps that was triggered due to the corrupted code and that's why I couldn't read it back. Although if the code was corrupted then the keyboard shouldn't work at all. At least that's my intuition.

-mike
 
fuse = lockbit. But that would have prevented you from reprogramming it. Something really got scrambled that's for sure.
 
I agree. Something wasn't right with that code. Thanks for the help on this. I'll post if I get down to a concrete solution!:)
 
i am new to microcontrollers, i am using 89c52 for my project and proload programmmer. i hv installed driver for the board and proload v5.4, when i try to bump the .Hex to the microcontroller it says

Detecting hardware.......
and a pop up window opens and says write funtion failed.... and none of the control in proload is not working... pls help i need to finish my project.:-(
thanks in advance my mail id is sarathbiz@yahoo.com
 
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