dfro Posted August 26, 2004 Report Share Posted August 26, 2004 Hi everyone,I am very excited about building many of the Midibox projects.For starters I need some basic help with getting my computer set up.I have spent the last 3 weeks getting my Mac running X11, so that I may take advantage of Eagle and many other freeware programs that will be useful. I have downloaded a program called "pcb" and I am starting to learn my way around it. Has anyone else had experience with it? I am new to the command line and shell scripts. It is a lot to learn, but very interesting. I very much like the deeper understanding of how computers work.I have Eagle now running, but I can't figure out how to download the various .brd files off of the Midibox website and load them into the Eagle program. Can anyone help? Pdf files of the pcb's might be helpfull for people who want to do the copy-machine/toner/iron/etching process.Also, what setup do I need to get a PowerBook G4 laptop burning chips? I see what looks to me as a 15 pin serial port in the back. Is that what I use? Or, do I need to buy a device that converts USB to Serial Port? How are people setting up Macs to burn chips?Thanks for any advice. I am eager to dive in!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chriss Posted August 26, 2004 Report Share Posted August 26, 2004 Cool another mac user here. Enjoying the worm free zone!!!I also have eagle on my ibook G4 running and it works very well. I think you can just import/open .brd files which are made with eagle v4.11 or newer. Or you can ask someone to open old eagle files in v4.11 and save them for you in the new version.Burning might work with a usb2serial converter but you need a burning software. Don´t´know if there is any. I was lucky and got an old P2 AMD Laptop which i use for these kind of things. chriss Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smashtv Posted August 26, 2004 Report Share Posted August 26, 2004 I found the following on the Dontronics website:16-Oct-2002 Toin Bloo The Netherlands Hello Dontronics, I received your goods today, in good shape. Thank you! And what is even better: it works! (EasySync) Now I'm able to connect the Cygnal microcontroller development kit to my Apple running in Virtual PC and download and control it.Warp-13 on a MAC: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 Rick LGreetings, A while back I purchased a WARP 13A Programmer along with the Easy-Sync USB to RS 232 Cable. Note that I am a Mac user and I don't own a PC. Thus, I am running Virtual PC 7 (Windows 2000 version) on my Mac which is running MaC OSX 10.2.6. I am writing to let you know that the WARP 13A and the Easy-Sync Cable work PERFECTLY with this setup. It only took a few minutes to get the WARP13A talking with MPLAB! Note that the 'serial port' shows up as COM3 and this needs to be changed in MPLAB; MPLAB defaults to COM1 So, there you have it, you CAN use a Mac with the WARP13A, the Easy-Sync Cable, and VIrtual PCA modified JDM (with battery!) and a -good- USB->serial convertor should do the job.Any leads on Mac PIC programming software? It would be nice to do it without Virtual PC ;)Best!SmashTV Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dfro Posted August 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 28, 2004 Thanks chriss and SmashTV for the comments. I am still forming a basic understanding of PIC programming with the computer (and electronics in general, and the command line.) I have ordered some PIC programming books, which are on the way. Although, I plan to start a project without the ability to burn PICs; eventually, I would like to write some code. So, I might as well begin tackling all the computer challenges, now. I am very new to this, so excuse me if I state the obvious or repeat myself. I have a lot of questions on how to proceed.What I need first is programs like IC-Prog, MPLAB IDE, and SDCC to write, read, compile, and burn code files. Correct?It seems that NOT ONE program for writing, compiling and burning code into a chip exists for the Mac! I searched the web for quite some time with no luck in finding anything. Bill really does have a nice monopoly going! Are there any programs that Midibox people are using on Linux? It looks like a lot of development is happening to get PIC programming on Linux - http://www.gnupic.org/. I would like to get a computer running Linux in the near future. A major goal of mine is to use the open-source Ardour digital recording software (http://ardour.org/) with a Midibox, if that is possible!! It would also be great to do all the PIC coding and burning in Linux. I would appreciate any advice on setting up Linux for MIOS.In the mean time, I would like to try to emulate the Windows environment on my Mac using open source software, rather than buy the Microsoft "Virtual PC on Mac" program. There is an open source project called Darwine, which is porting over the Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project to OS X. I don't think wine is working under Mac's X11.app. Darwine looks very promising, but it is still in development. I wonder if that would work. I am concerned about all of the hardware and software working properly. I still think this might be a good approach, since people can use the software they are used to. With some help, I would like to try this. Is anybody else trying this already?Where does Perl fit into the Midibox programming settup. By the way I do not know how to read .php files in OS X. How does one do that? In the bootstrap page, Thorsten talks about a perl script to convert hex to syx. Where is that? Do you need to download it?Do I have this straight? When a PIC is first burned, it needs to use the JDM Module or now the Brocolli18. After that, any changes can be done through MIDI using the bootstrap loader and programs like MIDI-OX and (for Mac) SysEx Librarian. Correct? Is the bootstrap loader code that is written into the MIOS? Or is it hardware? The beginning description in the MIOS Bootstrap Loader section tells what it does - not what it is. I am not sure what it is.It would be nice if MIOS/PIC programming was worked out for the Mac OS X/Darwin/X11 and Linux platforms and then documented on the web site. I personally would like an alternative to needing Windows. Maybe some sections of the forum dedicated to getting different computer OS's operating with various hardware and software could be helpful to a lot of people. Let me know what you all think, if you wish. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pilo Posted August 28, 2004 Report Share Posted August 28, 2004 Hi dfro!First, it's possible to make midibox program in C or ams with only free software ;)I use gpasm for asm compiling, sdcc for generating asm code from C code. I post my makefile for sdcc/gpasm on the mios programming forum.I don't know a program like ic-prog for linux, as I burn the bootstrap loader only one, but I think there's one somewhere ;)I make a midibox for ardour only too hehe (with 8 switch per fader). Actually I try to make a Procontrol clone ;) Ardour becomes a very interesting DAW, very powerful.so yes, you need a JDM or Brocolli programmer only one for bootloader, then you can upload firmware via MIDI. To do this I use a perl script written by Thorsten (mios_upload.pl) which can be found in the tool directory of the mios zip file.The hex2syx.pl script convert hex file (hex file are the compiled asm file) to syx file, which can be upload via MIDI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey_Sadler Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 Hi All,There used to be a Mac program for programming PICs called MacPIC. (Do a google for MacPic and it may still be available - somewhere.) Kevin Coble, the name, has discontinued it and is working on a program called MacrocASM for OS X. See http://www.macrobotics.com/MacPIC.html for more info and the download page. At this time it doesn't support PIC18xxx yet but if we joggle his elbow a bit, maybe it will soon. Also, some of us Mac types may be able to use the info on his web site to add the chip definitions.Mickey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 In the bootstrap page, Thorsten talks about a perl script to convert hex to syx. Where is that? Do you need to download it?I have been scouring the forums, and finally Google answered this question:http://www.ucapps.de/midibox/mk_syx.zip... although I just tried using it and maybe it's an old version or something. When I try to convert the file called "update_without_installed_mios.hex" I get an error "ERROR: File doesn't end with '.ini'".I tried just changing the file name to end with .ini instead of .hex, then executing again, and I get a new error: "ERROR in section 0, line 1: don't know what to do with statement ':020000040000FA'!"I am continuing to look into this, but if somebody with experience in this field could help me out I'd be most grateful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamjking Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 You no longer have to use Perl to convert the *.hex file to SysEx. MIOS Studio allows you to directly upload a hex file and do the conversion automatically.- Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 Thanks - except that MIOS Studio won't recognize MIDI ports on my Mac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamjking Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 Try this thread: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=5230.0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryd_one Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 In defense of MIOS studio...MIOS Studio won't recognize MIDI ports on my Mac.Ahh... you mean your Mac won't present the MIDI ports to MIOS Studio... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 In defence of my Mac ...Ahh... you mean your Mac won't present the MIDI ports to MIOS Studio...Nope. I mean MIOS Studio requires Java 1.5, which I do not have, although the PlumStone option will perhaps provide a workaround.Stay tuned... ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryd_one Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 Sorry, allow me to correct myself...In defense of MIOS Studio and Macs, we mean Java won't allow your mac to present the MIDI Ports to MIOS Studio ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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