Boot Down lets you read, write and modify the memories of a Microchip PIC micro controller over USB.
Boot Down is Copyright © 2007, Craig Schimmel clschimmel@comcast.net
Limitations:
This software is provided as freeware. You may use it as you choose, as long as you accept the following:
Requirements:
Boot Down uses a USB interface, so a chip from the USB enabled Microchip PIC family is necessary. The following Microchip PIC micro controllers are supported:
Future USB capable PIC micro controllers should also work, provided they run the boot loader firmware.
Boot Down works with the boot loader provided by Microchip, or from the Create USB Interface (CUI) project project. The Microchip firmware is for the PICDEM USB demo board, although it doesn't require the PICDEM board. You can find it on the Microchip web site in the PICDEM USB section.
The micro controller needs to be loaded with the boot loaderbefore Boot Down can work. For developers using a Macintosh, this can be a chicken & egg situation. You need to have access to another device programmer to initially get the boot loader into the micro controller
There are a variety of ways to handle this, though almost all revolve around using a Microsoft Windows PIC programmer of some sort - either an actual PC or running Windows in a virtual machine. Commercial programmers can be purchased, or easily built from scratch.
A naked chip just isn't going to do much for you. Before attempting to use Boot Down, you need to make sure your circuit is functional. If you plug the USB cable from your circuit into the Macintosh and the device shows in System Profiler, then you are ready for Boot Down. If System Profiler can see it, then Boot Down isn't going to find it either.
Note: a device in boot loader mode will (unless you changed it) show up in System Profiler with a generic name "USB Device", a vendor ID of 0x04d8, and a product ID of 0x00b.
If you are new to PIC micro controllers or the USB variants, the Create USB Interface is a good starting point.