MSP Flasher user's guide

MSP Flasher

MSP Flasher is a user-friendly shell-based interface that provides easy access to MSP devices through JTAG or Spy-Bi-Wire (SBW) by porting the most common functions of the MSP Debug Stack to the command line.

Trademarks

eZ430, LaunchPad, eZ430-Chronos, MSP430, MSP432, SimpleLink are registered trademarks of Texas Instruments.

OS X is a registered trademark of Apple Inc.

Ubuntu is a registered trademark of Canonical Ltd.

Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

1 Introduction

The typical MSP Flasher execution flow consists of the following steps. Optional steps can be activated or deactivated by using special triggers or parameters (see Section 3).

Initialize FET debugger
Perform FET recovery (if a corrupted FET firmware is detected)
Update FET firmware (if a mismatch between firmware and MSP Debug Stack versions is detected)
Power up the target MSP device
Configure the target MSP for JTAG or SBW communication
Connect to the target MSP and display device information
Optional: Erase (parts of) the target device memory
Optional: Load target code into the device from a TXT or HEX file
Optional: Verify target code transfer
Optional: Read device memory and write it to a TXT or HEX file
Optional: Reset the device
Optional: Lock JTAG access
Optional: Reset the device
Optional: Power down the device
Optional: Start target code execution
Disconnect from the target MSP device
Close the FET connection

Status reports are written to a text file named log.txt. This file is saved in the Log folder under the folder where the MSP Flasher executable resides. If the Log folder does not exist, it is automatically created. New instances are appended to the log file, and old logs are never overwritten.

NOTE

For a GUI-based alternative to MSP Flasher, see UniFlash. As of version 4.0, UniFlash features a command line interface with MSP Flasher compatibility mode.

2 Compatibility

MSP Flasher supports the following operating systems:

Windows® 7 32 bit or 64 bit
Windows 8 32 bit or 64 bit
Windows 10 32 bit or 64 bit
Ubuntu® 12.04 32 bit or 64 bit
Ubuntu 14.04 32 bit or 64 bit
Ubuntu 16.04 32 bit or 64 bit
OS X® 10.9 or newer

NOTE

MSP Flasher for Linux does not support eZ430™ development tools. This includes the Value Line LaunchPad™ development kit with eZ430 onboard emulation, eZ430-Chronos™ development tool, and older MSP-EXP430 experimenter boards with eZ430 onboard emulation.

MSP Flasher requires a hardware interface to communicate with MSP target devices. The following TI flash emulation tools (FETs) are supported:

MSP-FET
MSP-FET430UIF
eZ-FET and eZ-FET lite
eZ430 (including LaunchPad development kits)

NOTE

Do not disconnect the JTAG or emulator USB cable while MSP Flasher is running. Wait until MSP Flasher execution is finished before disconnecting the debugger or target device.

NOTE

To differentiate between multiple eZ430 tools (for example, two or more Value Line LaunchPad tools connected to the same host PC), connect each tool individually or use the unique identifier that is reported by MSP Flasher.
("Found USB FET @ HID0xxx:COMxxx").

Use this identifier with the –I switch whenever more than one eZ430 debugger is connected.