ICD-U40 and FTDI USB<-> RS-232 chips

[Guest]

Hello there -

I have a robust, stand-alone application running on an 18F452 chip with data being displayed on some LED displays. In addition, I send data out the PIC UART, and if the user wants, they can see data on a GUI I built in Visual Basic.

I have been asked to port the application's "PC-side" so that the serial port is replaced by USB. Makes sense. I think the easiest way is to use an FTDI RS-232-USB "bridge" and will try out the FT2232C. It seems that there maye be conflicts between the FTDI chip in the ICD-U40 programmer I am using and the target FTDI chips. I am a total USB newbie- any advice? Is it easy to change the PID or VID to avoid conflicts? Can the user do this? I don't have the FTDI evaluation module yet'; I aske these questions "in advance."

Thanks very much!
Werner

[rwyoung]

I have been using the FT232BM and FT245BM chips from FTDI connected to PICs and programming them with the ICD-40U for a month now.

The only problem I have encountered is sometimes, immediately after programming the EEPROM for the FTDI chip, the ICD software can't "find" the ICD-40U. But re-enumerating the ICD-40U seems to solve that problem.

I have a block of PIDs from FTDI so I'm not using the default 0x6001 value.

Also, when programming the EEPROM on my devices, I do not have the ICD-40U plugged in or I do the EEPROM programming on another PC. The MPROG utility from FTDI is pretty smart but I don't want it accidentally blasting the EEPROM inside my ICD-40U...
_________________
Rob Young
The Screw-Up Fairy may just visit you but he has crashed on my couch for the last month!