Friday, December 25, 2009

Flash Loader for 8-Pin ZiLOG MCUs

Serial Port Flash Loader for 8-Pin Z8F Zilog Encore(XP)

One major problem for the ZiLOG 8-pin mcu's is that it needs an expensive usb smart cable in order for the program to be 'flashed'/'burned' to their memory. This application aims to address this problem, by using a common serial port for flash loading (reading and erasing as well) instead of using an expensive tool.



For now,it's only tested with 8-pin Z8F042A. Hopefully in the future, it can also support other ZiLOG MCUs, not only these 8-pins (those 20- and 28-pins should be easier to program).

download: Flash Loader for 8-Pin Z8F.rar

forum link for project progress: Serial Port Flash Loader for 8-Pin Zilog MCUs

update(123009):
already tested with 8-pin z8f0423 and 28-pin z8f082a (yes, soic-28 also)

update(010110):
Win32 Executable verion: Flash Loader for 8-Pin Z8F (WIN32 Executable).rar
it only requires msvcp90.dll - most Win32 OS already have this; if not yet installed, it can be downloaded from Microsoft.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, thanks for the post. Do you know if I can use some usb-serial adaptor to work well on it ? May I use for 80QFP ICs too ? Thanks

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  2. Hey, do you really need the DTR tied to the reset pin. For me it's not a problem, but my project partner has no DTR pin on his usb to TTL UART converter pcb. He cannot get this to work, so maybe that was the issue right there.

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