Problem

[Konstantinos Aravanis]

Hello,

I purchased the Parallel port JTAG cable in order to upgrade the
biffboot of some old biffers that I had. When I try to extract the
biffboot from a new biffer the returned error is:

$ ./biffjtag -d biffboot
BiffJTAG v1.0: Copyright (c) Bifferos (2009), http://www.bifferos.com
Distribution prohibited, all rights reserved.

Dumping whole flash to 'biffboot'.
Resetting CPU (this can take a long time)...
IO Error: Unable to intialise JTAG

Does anyone know why I have this problem?

Also I asked from the google site the permissions to download the
biffboot-4.0-alpha.bin.

Regards,
Kostas Aravanis

[biff...@yahoo.co.uk]

Hi Konstantinos,

Is resistor R19 present on your board?
https://sites.google.com/site/bifferboard/Home/howto/convert-jtag-pins-to-gpio/R19.jpg

If not, JTAG pins are disabled, this was a mistake with some of the
boards in the latest batch. Most people won't care, and indeed many
will appreciate that they don't need to do the GPIO mod as the pins
can be used for GPIO without hardware modification of the board.

If you have R19 missing, you need to short it with 10k res. during
power on (be careful not to short other components!). However, if all
you want to do is back up the bootloader, just copy /dev/mtd2 in
OpenWrt.

regards,
Biff.

On May 18, 9:22 am, Konstantinos Aravanis <kos.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I purchased the Parallel port JTAG cable in order to upgrade the
> biffboot of some old biffers that I had. When I try to extract the
> biffboot from a new biffer the returned error is:
>
> $ ./biffjtag -d biffboot

> BiffJTAG v1.0: Copyright (c) Bifferos (2009),http://www.bifferos.com

[Konstantinos Aravanis]

I have some biffers with the R19 and some others without the R19. But I have the same problem on both of them.

Kostas

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--
Konstantinos Aravanis // sbosx
My site & blog: http://AravanisKostas.com
http://python.org.gr - Ελληνική Κοινότητα Προγραμματιστών Python

[biff...@yahoo.co.uk]

It sounds like it's the host machine. I tested all the parallel port
JTAG adapters myself, to ensure they talked to a board before I we
sent them, so I'm pretty sure the cable is OK. There's no chance
you've got the cable the wrong way round is there? Is there some way
you can observe whether software on the host is actually changing the
JTAG logic levels?

Only thing I can think of is:
1) Other linux software using parallel port at the same time
2) Parallel port hardware is on the wrong port of the PC, e.g LPT2 or
something

regards,

Biff.

On May 18, 11:47 am, Konstantinos Aravanis <kos.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have some biffers with the R19 and some others without the R19. But I
> have the same problem on both of them.
>
> Kostas
>

> On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:19 PM, biffe...@yahoo.co.uk
> <biffe...@yahoo.co.uk>wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi Konstantinos,
>
> > Is resistor R19 present on your board?
>

> >https://sites.google.com/site/bifferboard/Home/howto/convert-jtag-pin...

[Andrew Scheller]

> I purchased the Parallel port JTAG cable in order to upgrade the
> biffboot of some old biffers that I had. When I try to extract the
> biffboot from a new biffer the returned error is:

Bear in mind that biffboot is locked to the MAC address of each board
(printed on the sticker), so simply dumping the biffboot from one
bifferboard and writing it to another bifferboard won't work (or it
might work, but with unexpected results). The only way to upgrade
biffboot on an existing board is to ask for MAC-specific biffboot
binary images for each board from Biff (via email, not on the mailing
list).

> Also I asked from the google site the permissions to download the
> biffboot-4.0-alpha.bin.

IIRC that only works with Qemu and not with real Bifferboard hardware.

Lurch

[biff...@yahoo.co.uk]

On May 18, 1:22 pm, Andrew Scheller <ya...@loowis.durge.org> wrote:
> > I purchased the Parallel port JTAG cable in order to upgrade the
> > biffboot of some old biffers that I had. When I try to extract the
> > biffboot from a new biffer the returned error is:
>
> Bear in mind that biffboot is locked to the MAC address of each board
> (printed on the sticker), so simply dumping the biffboot from one
> bifferboard and writing it to another bifferboard won't work (or it
> might work, but with unexpected results). The only way to upgrade
> biffboot on an existing board is to ask for MAC-specific biffboot
> binary images for each board from Biff (via email, not on the mailing
> list).

Unless it's a 1MB board, in which case the 'community edition'
version
can be used, which allows any MAC address to be set.

I must get around to publishing that somewhere, I think I've got all
the
feedback I'm going to!

Biff.