I would just like to know for sure – can either the Olimex MSP430-JTAG or MSP430-JTAG-TINY be used to program and debug the MSP430F5438 microcontroller? I’m also trying to find out which development environments can be used with these two devices. For example, do they work okay with TI Code Composer Essentials, or would I be limited to IAR Kickstart software?
Any help would be appreciated…
I’ve only ever used the TI USB FET with the MSP430. Its only $99 from TI, and works with all MSP430s, including Spy-Bi-Wire.
Code Composer Essentials works with the 5438, but is limited to 16KB of code, which mostly defeats the point of the 5438 and all MSP430X parts. The full version ($499) fixes that. I recommend basically ignoring the Eclipse IDE and using the compiler from the command line/normal makefiles, but thats my style.
mspgcc has experimental support for MSP430X. YMMV (It didn’t work well enough for me, and I needed it now™).
The 5 series has Spy-By-Wire, you can just get a eZ430-F2013 and use that programmer for Spy-Bi-Wire.
eZ430 cannot and will not be able to handle F5xxx. The other tools do not work that well with F5xxx either, but they will fix that some day. The $99 TI USB interfaced hardware and IAR software are probably ahead of others at this moment.
OldCow:
eZ430 cannot and will not be able to handle F5xxx…
Really? What’s the issue with it; just a driver/software issue? I’m using my ez430 with a few F2xxx parts right now and I was hoping to try out the F550x parts when they become available.
Just looked it up:
http://e2e.ti.com/forums/p/838/2391.aspx
I find this disturbing as I expect if they label it Spy-bi-Wire for it to be the same no matter what chip family it’s being used on. Hopefully support will be added with just a reflash of the current ez430.
Anyway, playing with an F2012 to see if I can get a very basic P2P RF network going in under 1k.
The issue is the firmware of F1611 used in eZ430. For some reason, TI never provide any update for that firmware. I noticed that they use a 12MHz crystal which is out of spec for F1611. Maybe it is very difficult to write firmware.
The JTAG (both 4-wire and SBW) are different in F5xxx. Without changing the firmware in the F1611, it is not possible for eZ430 to control F5xxx.
It’s not promising that they were talking about it a year ago and it’s still not out, so possibly there is hardware limitation that’s difficult to get around.
I see. I bet they will come up with a new eZ430-F5xxx some day (or thousands of days). I was taking about the existing eZ430.Just looked it up:
The JTAG protocol is different on the 5 series. Note that there are bugs in the current batch of chips (like the RTC mode). Hopefully it will be smooth sailing in the A revision.
The published bug list is pretty formidable already. And there are more un-published bugs and un-discovered bugs. I am waiting for rev-A too. But I would not hold my breath.
