First booting up of MSP430 based board

Hi,

I designed a MSP430 based PCB board (in Eagle) for my application :
I have used the following basic connections on the board -
oscillator (XOUT/XIN),
power (AVCC,DVCCL,etc.),
TDO/TDI/TCK/TMS, and
a few GPIOs...

I have a few questions:
Are there any other connections that are required to startup the microcontroller?

Also what is the procedure to program the board once it is fabricated (suppose I want to do simple toggling of a pin)?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks.

I would suppose that RESET / MCLR should be correctly terminated too in relation to the programming device.

From your signal list I suppose you use JTAG for programming. You should also bring out power to this connector, for voltage level referance for the programmer.

Gorgon said:

I would suppose that RESET / MCLR should be correctly terminated too in relation to the programming device.

From your signal list I suppose you use JTAG for programming. You should also bring out power to this connector, for voltage level referance for the programmer.

Click to expand...

Yes, I have connected the active low reset to VCC through a resistor.

I am also using looking at using JTAG for programming (Is there any other way?)... I wanted to know how exactly you program it using the JTAG pins. What do you mean by bring out power to this connector?

Thanks.

Hello!

I got the problem quite a while ago.
You have to connect the TEST pin. I don't know which chip you are using, but the TEST pin is important.
So to summarize:
JTAG related:
TEST, TDO, TDI, TMS, TCK
You have also to wire RESET and usually set a pullup on reset so that your board works even if
disconnected from JTAG.
Also you have to wire VCC either to pin 2 or pin 4 of JTAG. Which one is connected depends on
whether your device is powerd by JTAG or has its own power.

Now what do you mean by program the board once fabricated? Usually you have to make the board
first before programming it.
Or do you mean field programming (i.e. without JTAG)?
You can make it with a boot loader, or with USB directly with TI's utility.

That's about it.

Dora.

Hi,

On the msp430f2618 I can't find any TEST pin.. It's mentioned in a couple of places in the datasheet but in the pin diagram there doesn't seem to be any TEST pin, do you know which one it is?

I was looking for the procedure to program the board after making it. As in which pins do you have to connect and where,... Do you just connect the 4 pins to a JTAG programmer and upload the code by writing serially to the MCU through your PC?

Thanks.

Hello!

On the msp430f2618 I can't find any TEST pin..

Click to expand...

That's why you should have told us on post 1 which processor you are using.
https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/msp430/f/166/p/463005/1662334

As for the procedure to program it, you just plug your JTAG emulation tool and
use an IDE. It connects directly and does anything for you.
Now you are talking about 4 pins, but did you connect the RESET (with a pull-up)?

Dora.

Yes, I have connected a pull-up from the RST pin to VCC.

Hope that's all I have to do

Thanks...

Hi There in general there a few options to program the MSP430

1)You can use JTAG
2) you can use SPY By wire connectivity

for both of the program options you can do it on board but remember you should remove your on board reset circuit because both these connectivity uses reset for programming

second thing is if your are not using time critical application you can use the internal oscillator which is more than sufficient for most applications

the most common pinout for JTAG (TDO, TDI, TMS, TC) , RESET, VCC and GND ,
for SPY BI WIRE TEST,RESET,VCC,GND

if you need more details regarding programming or developing these MSP430 u can mail me any time my ID is pcb.vijay@gmail.com

Hi,

I'm sure you did not forget to connect GND to your microcontroller, but I can't find it in your posts.
Use a ground plane on your pcb.

Show us your pcb layout and we give more/better advice.

Klaus

Hello!

vijaya_narayana said:

Hi There in general there a few options to program the MSP430

1)You can use JTAG
2) you can use SPY By wire connectivity

Click to expand...

If it's only for program and use a debugger, yes, there are these 2 solutions. However, if I remember
correctly, ehr 2618 doesn't support SBW. And I think the TEST pin is related to using either JTAG or
SBW (I'm not sure of this one, so please verify). But it would be consistent since there is apparently no
test pin.

So I guess you are stuck to JTAG.

Is it possible to post your schematic? At least the part involving JTAG and its MCU connections.

Dora.

Hi just checked msp430f2618 , it does not have a test pin so you cannot use Spy By wire you need to have only JTAG connectivity

Test PIN is used for Spy By wire programming

KlausST said:

Hi,

I'm sure you did not forget to connect GND to your microcontroller, but I can't find it in your posts.
Use a ground plane on your pcb.

Show us your pcb layout and we give more/better advice.

Klaus

Click to expand...

Hi,
Thanks for all the help
If any1 can confirm from the schematic/board designs, it would be great
**broken link removed**
**broken link removed**

Thanks again.