EPPO Troubleshooting

Building the EPPO hardware. Solving problems , and getting it to work.

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I want to control EPPO from Linux, Pascal Schiks NL
I can not find anything on the API to get EPPO working under Linux.
The Eppo manager is written for Windows. The acompanying helpfile and possibly other distributed files contains all available info. If you don't use Windows, you could use Wine under Linux to run EppoManager, or to display/print the low-level protocol notes. We are playing around with our own cross-compiler, which is in a very early stage in development. Maybe it will never take off, but we would like to try it first. In case the compiler does take off, we will release the compiler for a lot of different OS-ses. At that time we will release the scripting engine as a separate API, also for different operating systems. With the protocol however you should be able to create your own manager, in any OS you like.

Programming without erasing, Erik Lemmen NL
I'm used to programmers which automatically erase the device. Is it an option to change the program script that it first erases the device?
Again, the scripting engine is very versatile, and you can build it anyway you like. I don't know the current status of the program script, but I can imagine that it warns you that the device is not empty, and that it must be erased first. You can also be patient and wait for somebody who posts a script that fulfills your wishes.

EM does not detect device, Martien NL
The correct device is not detected by the Eppo Manager
The Eppo Manager can not detect the device you want to process. All communications to and from your target device are determined by scripting, so detecting will be too. You could make a script that looks for the device ID bits in config memory, and eventually report the PIC's type in the script-output-screen. Eppo is unable to change device types dynamically on purpose! If your menu structure is empty, ie it does not display device types, it will be nescessary to (re)set the path to your scripts directory. You can do that with Files|Settings|Set Scriptdirectory...

Eppo Manager hangs itself!
Certain scripts seem Eppo Manager to hang itself!
That can be the case under certain circumstances. We recently discovered that the scripting engine has difficulty with interpreting rem statements. Although a rem statement on itself will not "do" anything (except to anchor goto statements), somehow the current version of the interpreter tries to make some sense of the remark itself. As it turns out, you are not allowed to use capital letters in the rem statements at this time. So a fancy function name as "Destroy my 12F675 please" will hang the scripting engine on 2 points. We however made some improvements to the scripting engine of the 17 jan 2007 version. You are now allowed to use empty lines in the scripts. Also it is now possible to use the semicolon after a print statement, so that the next print output attaches itself behind the previous print output. Another bug was removed. Any other file extentions in the script directory caused the manager to display an empty error message. This is fixed now.

Destroyed F675! Eric Post, Eindhoven NL  
I built EPPO, inserted the blank F675 device, programmed it with the demo 1 software, and it worked right away! Next I programmed the same device with the demo 2 software, and the device seems destroyed since then! I did the same with a new F675 device, but now I erased the device between the two attempts. Both versions worked. Programming the device  with other software without erasing it seems to destroy the device! I also think that IC4 is running a little hot. What's wrong?
As you might have guessed, you have to erase your device before programming it. I would suggest changing the "program" script for the F675 device, so that it exits when the device is not empty. The EPPO team also did some testing with and without erasing, but we never encountered these problems. There can also be a problem with the switching of the +5V via T1, or a ground-loop between supply and PC. 

I keep on destroying F675s. Eric Post, Eindhoven NL
Now the third F675 device is exit! Everything on the PCB is in order, so it must be a software issue.
Please use the lastest EPPO manager and scripts! Older scripts might not be as sophysticated as the new ones. For instance the "erase" script might forget to save the calibration value before erasing. If you program the device, and read it back, you will see that the program is in the device, but it will not work due to the missing calibration value. There is a rescue script available, which you can use to program only the calibration value to a static number. The device however might be a little off-frequency after the operation.

The patches are fuzzy. General remark.
The patches to the Led Bar Demo Board are a little fuzzy to me. Can you enlarge the important part of the modification for us?



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