PIC18F4550 USB Bootloader and Delphi

ratgod · Joined: 27 Jan 2006 Posts: 69 Location: Manchester, England

Hi there,
I have been doing a lot of experimenting with my 4550's USB and I am getting rather tired of swapping the USB lead between my project and the programmer every time I want to re-flash the firmware.

Does anyone have a simple bootloader for the 4550 (an possibly 2550) and possibly Delphi source code for the PC side of it, or maybe just a detailed description on how I would go about sending the hex.

Is there a way of jumping into bootloader mode without an external trigger? I want to keep as many pins available as possible.

I have made an EPROM reader which I will be eventually developing into an EPROM programmer, and i have to keep updating it when I make changes.
when its finished I will put the schematics and code on here for whoever wants it.

Many thanks in advance.

Pret · Joined: 18 Jul 2006 Posts: 92 Location: Iasi, Romania

You have a single USB in your PC or why do you have to swap the PIC's USB with programmer's USB?
If you'r using bootloader on PIC's USB, how about programing it on USART instead USB? Because of the pins?

ratgod · Joined: 27 Jan 2006 Posts: 69 Location: Manchester, England

I have a laptop where I do most of my development work and it only has 2 USB ports, 1 is used for the mouse and the other is used for my ICD2, CCSICD and other things.

I don't have serial ports on this laptop, just 2 usb ports and a PCMCIA slot which is currently used by my smartcard reader.

I have a USB-RS232 lead but that would defeat the entire point as I would still have to swap the programmer with the USB-RS232 lead.

thanks