Here we go again folks, a wild ride with a big OS change. Has anyone
discovered whether the eZ430-F2013 and Microsofties new Vista
OS make zee boooootiful muzique together or do we get
to yell ‘Sacre Bleu!’ a lot and hope for an upgrade from TI?
Anyone know if an upgrade is necessary, planned, in the works, finished?
Where to get it?
Larry
When you share your experience of eZ430-F2012 vs. Vista, will you please include information about which version of Vista, updates included, and what PC hardware you are using?
There are already occasional mysterious problems with the eZ430-F2013 USB driver vs. Windows-XP. Very difficult to nail down even what the problems are.
I am one of the early users of eZ430-F2013 and I use XP with it. At first, I had no problem with them at all. Then I started to hear from others with their problems. After a while, I started to have problems too (but not often). Am I crazy to blame MS updates?
I’m a new user of the MSP430 and eZ430-F2013 boards.
I’m MAC based and will have to purchase a new PC in order to relate
to the MSP430 boards. Within a day of receiving these amazing little
MSP430 boards from TI I found that the PC world was in a new throe
of upheaval with Vista releasing and all the computer ads talking
only about that program.
I could get an older new PC with XP but the new laptops with Vista
are another step forward (at least in theory) and it would be interesting
to get one of them for this project. So I wanted to ask this forum whether
Vista worked at all with the eZ430 software yet because I’ve lived through
similar MAC changes that simply caused previous programs to quit working
altogether.
Basically I’m assuming that Vista will not work without rather extensive
upgrading of the basic eZ430 workbench program but I’m very interested
to hear from anyone on this list that has any real experience with the issue.
So far as accruing bugs with upgrades that was the same with MACs until
OSX. After that I’ve seen the effect little at all. If Vista is properly
designed it may reduce that problem too. It does suggest, however,
that the basic ‘Windows 2000’ version of the eZ430 software is not
being intensely updated to follow MS’ circuitous path up the ole’
programming mountain closely. Or that the gallons of DDT needed
to clear the bugs was excessive. TSK!
Comments from anyone?
Larry
I haven’t used the ez430, but I have been able to use the olimex usb tiny and the rowley crosconnect with crossoworks on Vista Business.
So far mine does. Only managed to run basic LED flash demo, changed a few lines, then recompiled/linked and debugged.
Much further than I got last year with XP and the eZ430.
Went to TI website and downloaded latest sw.
Vista Home Premium (not sure of exact update status)
Intel Core 2 Duo T5300, 1.73GHz.
Toshiba A205-S4607, 200GB HDD, 2GB RAM
IAR Kickstart
Now trying to figure out how to use the Cap board that also came during 430day.
I have things working fine on a Vista laptop with the EZ430-2013 USB device as well as the latest IAR Kickstart (V3.42A) downloaded from TI.
Note: It worked fine then ran into a real PitA problem that I recently fixed. I was sudenly getting a “Failed to initilize the device” error from IAR when trying to debug on the 430.
I tried numerous resetting and reinstalling with no change. Finally found the issue. The TI USB device creates a virtual COM port - in my case COM17. It turns out that com port was getting hijacked by another program and opening that port - so it was blocked for IAR. It was confusing that with another virtual com port created by my bluetooth driver. Once I got that other program straightened out, all was fine.
Anyone know if the TI USB dongle from the EZ430 with it’s 4 line connector (USB-IF) can be used to develop on the “LCD Development Board for MSP430F169” that they sell here? Should be a good combo.
Regards,
Steve
Anyone know if the TI USB dongle from the EZ430 with it’s 4 line connector (USB-IF) can be used to develop on the “LCD Development Board for MSP430F169” that they sell here? Should be a good combo.
No, those 4 lines are the so callled spy-bi-wire plus 3.6V and Gnd. The are used for F20xx only,
FYI, it is not always necessary to purchase new hardware to use Windows/Linux/etc for development. VMware makes virtual machine software along with others and you can usually install one operating system inside another with this.
For instance, my ez430-rf2500 kit came and when I tested to see if it was recognized by my Linux machine, it was not. I wanted to make sure it worked so I booted a virtual machine running Windows XP. The computer originally came with XP and I’d left a 10G partition sitting there with unbooted XP for years before learning VMware has a tool to build a virtual machine from a real hard disk image. So, I booted XP in the virtual machine, installed the IAR software as the instructions said, after plugging in the ez430-rf and setting the VMware console to expose that to XP, the driver install went as expected and running the demo showed the battery module temp and USB AP temp.
I also found that the ez430 will connect to the ez430-rf via pins 2-5(middle 4 pins) and the old ez430 software recognizes it. You just don’t get the Tx/Rx lines they use for the application. That could be hacked into another device if needed and is what I expect to do.