Bus Pirate 3.6 Build

Projects
61

Thanks @TomKeddie Bob and I were thinking we’d like to have another build night soon and combine it with a star build since I think the interest is out there. I will PM you and come pick up the boards from you once we get organized.

62

I may have spoke too soon, as I can’t get my Bus Pirate working! There is no serial response from it, no matter how I prompt it.

What I’ve tried/confirmed:

  • Did continuity check over every pin of every chip on the board to make sure they’re connected to their appropriate traces
  • Carefully inspected for solder bridges
  • Bus Pirate power light turns on
  • Upgraded FTDI driver on my computer
  • Confirmed that my computer sees the FTDI as a serial port (also queried the usb device ID, etc.)
  • Sent 0xc1 to query the bootloader (as described here), no response
  • Manually connected 5v serial lines (from an arduino uno) to the appropriate TX/RX pins on the PIC chip and tested the communication path back through the FTDI chip to my computer at 115200. Both RX and TX worked fine.

So it seems that my PIC chip probably isn’t programmed quite right.

@packetbob will you be at the space tonight? If so, could you bring the PICkit 3 again? If not, anyone else have one I could borrow?

63

I’m not sure if I can make it tonight as we have company in town…
Have you tried just installing the firmware via the USB?
I’m not sure if you actually get any sort of prompt in the bootloader mode…

64

  1. Was the PIC able to be programmed and verified?

  2. Is there power on the PIC power pins?

  3. It’s the oscillator. Desolder/check your crystal.

65

Last night I succeeded in getting everything working using these
instructions:

http://dangerousprototypes.com/2009/07/24/bus-pirate-firmware-upgrades/
Key step was powering down and connecting the PGD and PGC pins of the ICSP
header to trigger the bootloader (A).
Doing that, you see the MODE LED turn on.

I then used the application pictured on this page to flash the chip via the
USB port.

http://dangerousprototypes.com/2010/01/18/how-to-bus-pirate-bootloader-v4-upgrade/

Everything worked fine after that (was able to connect via Putty) and talk
to it.

66

This night was awesome! Thanks to the people who came out. A very big thanks to @packetbob for getting the parts together and bringing the amazing space shuttle SMD oven as well as @TomKeddie’s paste machine. And big thanks to @TomKeddie for the boards and other bits and bobs. Here are a few pics.

image
image800×600 85.8 KB

1 Like
67

@janet thanks for the photos, the best tool is that magnifier, am hopin to pick one up for home next time ai make it to China…

68

Shenzen roadtrip! That magnifier was a great help as was the glue/paste machine. I can think of about a 1000 uses for that.

69

Derp. After bridging PGD and PGC I was able to install the firmware over serial. Works as expected now.

Thanks all. :smile:

70

BTW I have a couple of bus pirates. The one I use the most is the one flashed with the stk500v2 emulator for programming AVRs. Using avrdude in buspirate mode is excruciating slow (bit banging over the serial port perhaps?).

http://dangerousprototypes.com/2009/11/21/bus-pirate-stk500v2-avr-isp-firmware/

The firmware can be found with the other bpv3 firmware.

71

BTW I found the solder paste dispenser via dangerous prototypes.

http://dangerousprototypes.com/2013/02/07/workshop-video-54/

Ian in the video now works in Shenzhen and runs dirtypcbs etc.

Best price I can find on the dispenser is about $CAD44 need to add shipping etc.

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.9.30VqNe&id=37580429276&ns=1&abbucket=13#detail

1 Like
72

Are there still parts and PCBs available for the Bus Pirate? I’m getting into coreboot and I could use one, but it looks like I thought to check here a couple days too late :frowning:

Semi-off topic: is there a pomona 5252 SOIC-16 clip laying around at the space that I could use with it?

73

No parts and I don’t think @TomKeddie has any more PCBs though he may be ordering some more…

74

I have a board on its way and I may have a complete set of parts, let me check this evening.

75

I have a new batch of board but no parts. Mostly the same, I changed the LDO regulators to make them easier to solder.

76

@jeff I can lend you a pirate for a while if you like.

77

that would be cool, thanks!

I want to do this: Board:lenovo/x200 - coreboot, it’s not time critical or anything so I was going for yak shaving points by building my own bus pirate since it would be handy to have one.

but I’ll have to find an SOIC-16 clip before I can do anything. I’ll keep you in mind when I do. Flashing the chip could be done in an evening at the space.

78

I have an older version (I think) of the bus pirate. If I can dig it up, I’ll donate it to the space. Basically, I just wanted to try some SMD soldering. It’s even got a fancy case.

79

Those clips are really sucky in terms of reliability. I would carefully solder the wires on, the pitch on a SOIC is huge.