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Programming the PIC16F1938 with a MiniPro TL866-II Plus

HB9FZL
 

Hello,

As I don't have a PicKit3, I tried my MiniPro TL866-II Plus universal programmer on the ATU-100, using ICSP access.

Reading the Flash and Eeprom seems to work perfectly, but as the current XgPro version (the software that drives the TL866) does not mention the PIC16F1938 in the list of supported MCUs, I chose the PIC16F1829 in the software, as it seemed the most similar I found. So that seems good, and it helped me to check the values stored in the eeprom of the Pic.

Anyway, I messed the firmware by accidentally reflashing it. According to its datasheet, the PIC16F1938 has a flash size of 0x4000, but the PIC16F1829 that has only 0x2000 for Flash. I suspect my universal programmer reflashed only half of the firmware because of this.

So, has anyone succeeded in using the TL866-II Plus for reflashing the ATU-100? I would like to avoid buying a PicKit3 just for this...
 

¿ªÔÆÌåÓý

I suspect you might be able to copy the set-up file for the? 1829 and then modify it to cope with the double memory size.

Most programmers, and I'm hoping the TL866 also, use a set-up file for each processor it knows about. They are usually somewhere in the directory tree of the application.

On 11/06/2022 06:13, HB9FZL wrote:

Hello,

As I don't have a PicKit3, I tried my MiniPro TL866-II Plus universal programmer on the ATU-100, using ICSP access.

Reading the Flash and Eeprom seems to work perfectly, but as the current XgPro version (the software that drives the TL866) does not mention the PIC16F1938 in the list of supported MCUs, I chose the PIC16F1829 in the software, as it seemed the most similar I found. So that seems good, and it helped me to check the values stored in the eeprom of the Pic.

Anyway, I messed the firmware by accidentally reflashing it. According to its datasheet, the PIC16F1938 has a flash size of 0x4000, but the PIC16F1829 that has only 0x2000 for Flash. I suspect my universal programmer reflashed only half of the firmware because of this.

So, has anyone succeeded in using the TL866-II Plus for reflashing the ATU-100? I would like to avoid buying a PicKit3 just for this...
HB9FZL
 

Yes, I was hoping that would be possible. Unfortunately it seems there is only a DLL file that contains all chips information. I've had a peek into it by disassembling it, and the infoIC2Plus.dll indeed contains routines that returns the list of supported ICs, and for each IC another function that returns the data. So it's really not convenient to patch the DLL...
 

It sounds like you've done your homework about the differences in the devices!

There's an open source program to control the minipro boxes. You can probably add the changes you've discovered for the PIC16F1938?to it easily and do yourself and everyone else a favor!



I use this program on Macintosh and linux all the time and it works very well for what's supported (currently roughly the same things as the programmer's official software).

I found that the original programming that came in my ATU-100 kit (the locked one from Malahit) actually did what I wanted with my 5W QRP rigs with no changes - I stopped trying to find a way to reprogram mine for now.

just a few thoughts....

M
AE0GL

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