Article: 10751 of comp.robotics
From: cmcmanis@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.robotics

SUBJECT: RE: TROUBLESHOOTING MINIBOARD V2.0

Date: 8 Jul 1994 06:54:37 GMT
Organization: FirstPerson Inc., Palo Alto, CA


Mark Essenburg (mark@sys6626.bison.mb.ca) wrote:
: Little bit of a trouble shooting problem here.

: Attempted to download code to a recently completed (as yet untested) 
: miniboard V2.0.

: The board (according to the documentation)  appears to properly be in 
: download mode (ie: red led off green led dimly lit)

: DL.EXE sends the bootstrap to the board and the led's flash back and 
: forth one to another for a second or two and then both light up to full 
: intensity and stay there until a reset is applied.  DL.EXE times out and 
: asks if the board is properly connected.

This is the bit where we get confused. Lots of people are that way so
don't be suprised if you are too. 

There are TWO MIT robot boards, both were designed by the same folks
however they are used in two DIFFERENT and INCOMPATIBLE ways. (emphasis
mine).

Miniboard 2.0. 
    DESCRIPTION:
	Designed by Fred Martin this board is small, has no expansion
	capability, drivers for 4 motors, 8 bits of parallel I/O, 8
	A/D channels, and the timer section available. Limited SPI
	capabilities are included too. 

    PROGRAMMING:
	This board is programmed using an assembler or a cross compiler
	which can produce Motorola "S-Record" format files. There is
	a utility called DLM.EXE (note the trailing M) which will load
	a hex file into the EEPROM of the 68HC11 on this board. A
	popular (and free) C cross compiler for the miniboard is
	ICC11 from ImageCraft (commercial version now available
	as well)

6.270 Board, Rev 2.11
    DESCRIPTION:
	Designed by Fred Martin and Randy Sargent this board is
	still fairly small but at least three times larger than
	the miniboard above. This board has 4 motor drivers on
	the main board and 32K of battery backed up RAM. There
	is an expansion board that holds an LCD display, more
	motor drivers (2), two relay drivers and > 10 A/D channels.
	There is also a "frob nob" (on board potentiometer) and a
	four position dip switch. There is also some prototyping area
	on the expansion board.

    PROGRAMMING:
	This board is programmed using an interactive C development
	environment written at MIT called "Interactive C" or IC for
	short. IC communicates with a small interpreter kernel nugget
	that is downloaded into the board FIRST using a program called
	DL.EXE (note the lack of trailing M). The board is then put
	into communication with IC and programming proceeds. This
	kernel/nugget is named PCODER21.S19 (it is a Motorola S-Record
	format file containing the P-Code interpreter)

You CANNOT use the 6.270 tools (IC) with the miniboard. 

: I belive the cable from the PC to be correct.  I pulled it apart last 
: night and rechecked all the connections.  It appears to be correct.

: Any guesses, anybody?

Since you called your Downloader DL.EXE I'm guessing you are trying
to use interactive-c with the miniboard. This won't work. Get a
copy of DLM.EXE from the cher.media.mit.edu /pub/miniboard directory
and try that.

: Please reply to 74001.2624@compuserve.com

I'll do that too but lots of people make this mistake so it bears
broadcasting now and again.

--
--Chuck McManis			     All opinions in this message/article are
FirstPerson Inc.                     those of the author, who may or may not
Internet: cmcmanis@firstperson.COM   be who you think it is.