Uploading MIOS/MBSID with PIC programmer

[Mikkel]

I didn't know if this should be in this forum or in one of the programming forums, so I'm sorry if it's misplaced.

Right now, I don't have access to any computers with midi ports, but I have a laptop and a USB PIC programmer. I want to make the Midibox SID, but there seems to be no way of getting MIOS/MBSID into the PIC other than via MIDI.

Is it possible to put the bootloader/MIOS/MBSID hex files into one hex file with one of the editors that can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HEX ?

If that's too impractical, would it be possible for someone with a PIC with bootloader/MIOS/MBSID to put it in a PIC programmer, read it and send me the file?

Also, if I use the Midibox-to-COM interface and write MIOS/MBSID into it this way, will the midi baudrate be fixed to 38400, or is there some clever way to get it back to 31250?

I hope you understand what I mean, some of the things were a bit hard to explain

Anders M.

[Wilba]

Is it possible to put the bootloader/MIOS/MBSID hex files into one hex file with one of the editors that can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HEX ?

Possible, but I wouldn't know how, or if it would work.

If that's too impractical, would it be possible for someone with a PIC with bootloader/MIOS/MBSID to put it in a PIC programmer, read it and send me the file?

That's probably a better solution...

Also, if I use the Midibox-to-COM interface and write MIOS/MBSID into it this way, will the midi baudrate be fixed to 38400, or is there some clever way to get it back to 31250?

If you upload MIOS/MBSID with a Midibox-to-COM interface, you can then just reprogram the config bits with your PIC programmer to switch it back to MIDI.

Read about the config bits here:

http://www.ucapps.de/mios_bootstrap_experts.html

and take care with the config bits as some programmers use a different byte ordering, and some don't write anything, leaving it all 0xFF!

I reccommend PICPgm.

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=jdm_with_picpgm

which might work with your programmer.

[Mikkel]

Great. The Midibox-to-COM sounds like the simplest solution.

I found an old PC with a midi port at work today, and managed to connect the 18F452 to it. The PC received the upload request, but I could not get any data through the other way, most likely because I couldn't find a darlington optocoupler and used a normal one. From looking at the datasheets, this optocoupler has a CTR of 50%, which is very low compared to the around 1000% for the 6N138. We'll see what I can find tomorrow.

Thanks for the help so far.

EDIT:

Tried some more with the PC with the midi port, this was hopeless as I couldn't find any suitable optocouplers.

Then I tried MB-to-COM, with a USB->COM cable. I changed the ID in the PIC. I opened up a serial port terminal, but I kept receiving E0 00 00 FC 03 03 03 EF every two seconds. The settings were 38400/8/N/1. Then I installed the COM-to-MIDI driver, and set up MIOS studio to use this port, but I received nothing with MIOS studio. At that point I gave up.

Then I opened notepad, and manually pasted together all the hex code that was PIC data, I discarded the configuration data and all that. What worries me is that MIOS and MBSID seemed to overlap a couple of places, namely at address 300-331 (lines starting with :10300 to :10331) and 7D0-7DE. At these places, I pasted in the pieces from the MBSID file, since that's the one that's written into the PIC last.

EDIT again:

Tried out the hex file that I had pasted together. Not surprisingly it didn't work. Had an other go with the MB-to-COM, it turned out I had the wrong PIC ID (annoying that most PIC programming software has a different way of writing the ID). Now it seemed to send the right data, when looking at it with a serial port terminal program. After I changed the serial port settings, the midi over serial driver seemed to work too, and I managed to transfer MIOS and MBSID.