GoodFet Built and flashed
I used 603 components in some spots where it called for 402.
Travis Goodspeed was cool enough to toss me a few goodfet PCB’s in the mail. I got them quite a while ago and have been waiting for a good time to assemble one and get it rocking. At work I have a project that I need an MSP programmer so I can go ahead and flash some code onto a prototype system. Well that being said it seemed like the perfect time to get this board working.
You can see how to build this board from the great flick photo travis has here. Or you can download the eagle files and go from there. Pick your prefrered poison. I just followed the flickr page / notes. If you are not used to soldering smd stuff I would suggest practice a bit on some cheaper IC’s as the MSP4302618 is about $13.
Once you get it all built up (y ou checked for solder bridges right?) you can plug it into a usb port. The TX and RX light flashes quickly then it just sits there as a VCP on your system (assuming you have the FTDI drivers installed). At this point we need to load up the latest goodfet firmware. Travis has authored a few python scripts + some other glue code that automates the download and install of the firmware over the net! A quick ./goodfet.bsl –fromweb and its on its way. See screen shot below. One thing to note is you will need pyserial on your system for the firmware downloader / installer to work. I did this from OSX however it works just as well on linux. I have not got this setup working from Windows yet. I did take 2 mins to try however. But it does seem like the way windows handles serial ports might blowup the firmware dl/installer script.
However as it would seem the way Travis does his hack to where there is not a need for a crystal is still a bit off. (hes fixing this soon) You can read the information here on how the non need for a crystal works here. To fix this Travis has a bunch of txt files with different timing values. The command to execute is.
./goodfet.bsl -e -p contrib/infos/2618-002.txt; ./goodfet.bsl -p msp430x2618.hex
Obviously choose your chip txt file and hex file. I am using the Goodfet 2.2. It uses the MSP4302618 so this is the file that I used. Note, the only 2 files that worked for my specific uC was:
You can verify that the goodfet is now working by doing a
./goodfet.monitor info
ril3y@linux:~/Desktop/goodfet/svngoodfet/trunk/client$ ./goodfet.monitor info
GoodFET with f26f MCU
ril3y@linux:~/Desktop/goodfet/svngoodfet/trunk/client$
Here is a video of the flashing process. Note, its super exciting 
