One MSP-FET430UIF/eZ430/eZ430U "driver" to rule them all?
Staffan Gimåker
So let's discuss how to move this forward!
The current situation is a bit of disaster in my opinion: there is a
multitude of more of less working tools, and what's known about the
protocol is spread across a number of blogs, source files, etc.
Furthermore, the existing tools (fetproxy, mspdebug, uif430, msp430fet)
only work on a subset of all chips and operating systems.
For example, it turns out some of the commands I decoded and added to
the wiki were already partially documented in uif430 source code.
I think any further work on this should be done with an agenda to
minimize further proliferation in this area. At the very least, there
could be a single place where the protocol is documented and logs shared
(like the fetproxy wiki). Going a bit further, perhaps some code can be
shared between the different tools, or consolidated altogether.
So how do we avoid further proliferation?
* Encourage people to contribute rather than roll their own tool. That
means having a homepage that can easily be found, a mailing list, public
repository, etc.
* Support all the common operating systems (Windows, Linux, OS X).
* Support all "dongles" sharing the same protocol (FET430UIF, eZ430 and
eZ430U as far as I know).
* Support as many chips as possible (goes without saying!).
I realize not all of existing tools share the same goals (e.g. mspdebug
has it's own debugger, fetproxy provides a GDB stub, msp430fet/uif430
are for programming); perhaps a library akin to MSP430.dll/HIL.dll might
be a good idea? Tools with different purposes could then be built upon
said library.
What do you think?
/Staffan