Establish Serial Communication

You will need to use a terminal emulation program tocommunicate with the MP3 player. Nearly any standardterminal emulation program may be used. Hyperterminal,which comes standard with Microsoft Windows will work(but many versions of Hyperterminal are slow, so youmight want to try Tera Term if you have a slow Hyperterminal).Linux users may install 'seyon' for X11, or use 'minicom'.The serial communication parameters must be set for19200 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, and noflow control.

Here are some screenshots showing how to set up Hyperterminal,which is included with Microsoft Windows. Usually Hyperterminalis located in the Programs / Accessories group. When runningit for the first time, it may ask you if you want to installa modem. Even though is says you need to install a modem, youin fact do not need to do this, so just press 'No', and cancelany additional setup dialog boxes until you just have themain Hyperterminal window showing.

The first step is to bring up the properties window. Thiscan be done by clicking the properties button in thetoolbar (as shown), or by selecting 'Properties' from the'File' menu.

The next step is to select your serial port, in the'Connect using:' field, as shown. Then click the'Configure' button to set up the serial port parameters.

The last step is to set Hyperterminal's setting to match thesettings required by the MP3 player board. Use 19200 baud,8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, and no flow control. It isimportant to select 'None'. Using 'Hardware' or 'Xon / Xoff'are likely to cause problems, if they work at all.

When the board is turned on, it will transmit a welcomemessage, shown in the next step.

Get To The 'PAULMON2_MP3' Prompt

In this example, the S key was pressed as soon asthe message appeared, and the MP3 player application wasnot automatically run. There is only 1/2 second availableto press 'S', so you'll need to be quick to abort automaticstartup.

In most cases, it's not necessary to be quick with the Skey, you can just let the MP3 player application start up andtype QUIT while it's running. The instant you pressthe T it should stop, put the disk drive into sleepmode, and return you to the PAULMON2_MP3 prompt. Here's anexample where QUIT was typed while the player was running:

Erase the Flash ROM

Rev A: If you are unable to erasethe flash, check the 'FLASH EN' jumper located just belowthe 74HC165 chip. This jumper must be shorted to enablechanges to the flash rom. There is no jumper on Rev B andRev C boards, so they are always enabled for writing.

Send The New Firmware HEX File

Just begin sending the file to the serial port, using theterminal emulation software to transmit the contents of thefile. This is not a file transfer protocol (such as xmodem).You must send the file directly without any protocol. Theboard can receive at the maximum possible data rate, so itis not necessary to add delay (often called pacing).

To transmit the file in Hyperterminal, use 'Send Text File..'from the 'Transfer' menu.

Driver video grabber usb 2.0. At the beginning of the download, PAULMON2 will print acarrot ^ to indicate that the download has begun,and a dot as it receives each new line of data.

The download process takes approximately 2 minutes for firmwarerevision 0.6.10. Some terminal emulators have options to addadditional delays while tranmitting text, which are unnecessaryand only serve to make the download much slower.If yourterminal emulation software updates its window during the transfer(Hyperterminal does) you'll see a steady stream of dotsas the data is sent. At the end, you'll see a summary from theboard. Make sure it says 'No errors detected'. If there were errors,try erasing the flash rom and downloading again.

Reboot

Tera Term - A Better Windows-Based Terminal Emulator

Michael J. Pounders provided thisTera Term script to automate the firmware upgrade.

Fast Flash Download