MiniPro GUI is a very easy to use interface for the Minipro command line tools. It also has functionality with the homebrew/Cross avr tools. This application is used for programming one of the over 14,000 different eproms supported by the TL866II plus programmer. Getting it set up is quite easy. First, download MiniPro GUI here https://github.com/DLXXV-Kelvin/MiniPro-GUI. Next there are a few other things to download and install.
The original minipro command line tools was created for Linux by Valentin Dudouyt before being passed down to David Griffith who ported it to OSX. https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/minipro. You must have this installed. You also need to install the homebrew/cross avr tools. For instructions on installing those please go to https://github.com/osx-cross/homebrew-avr and install those as well. Once that is done you are ready to set everything up.
Setting up the paths:
Once everything is installed, open the MiniPro GUI application. You will see that there are three different places for locations in the middle of the app. You need to direct the application to the path to those other applications. This generally would not be needed but sometimes files get put into different directories and we want to be sure we have everything right. The files you need are in obscure places so we will do a search for them in case you don’t know where they are.
Open your terminal application and type which minipro just as in the image. It will show you the path where you can find minipro. Do the same for avr-gcc and avr-objcopy. once you have all of the locations for those programs you can input them into Minipro GUI.
As stated earlier, on MiniPro GUI you will see these options. Click on the minipro path and find the file where it was located when you used the which command. Simply click the file and press open. Minipro GUI will now point to that file until you change it. It will remain even after you close the program so you only need to do this once. Do the same for avr-gcc and avr-objcopy. Some of these folders may be hidden. If you can’t find them then press [command] + [shift] + [.] when viewing files and the hidden files and folders will be shown.
Using MiniPro GUI:
Now that all of the stuff is out of the way it’s time start using MiniPro GUI. While there are a few bits of information you can get from certain options without having your TL866 connected it is best to have it connected before you get started. From here on assumes you have your programmer connected.
Eprom Options:
The first thing we’ll look at is checking the chip that is inserted into your programmer.
- Chip 1: This textbook is where the name of your chip goes. The dropbox underneath has some of the more common chips in it. When typing the name of your chip in be aware that the programmer might name the chip differently depending on the package. If the chip you are using is say a DIP16. The programmer might expect you to add that.
- Chip 2: This is a search for the type of chip. You can type the first few letters of the chip you are using and it will bring up a list of matching names. This is where you can find the actual name the programmer uses for any particular chip.
- Chip 3: These return chip information.
- Chip 4: This runs a test on all of the pins to ensure they are all connected and functioning.
- Chip 5: This tests all areas of the chip to see if they are blank. If it is not blank you will see an error. If it is blank it will say so.
- Chip 6: This performs a logic test on the chip
Writing to the eprom:
Now we can move on to some of the more interesting topics. To write code into the chip you must have a compiled file usually this is a .hex file.
To write the code onto the chip you will first want to click the top button and find the file that you will be writing to the chip. Once that is done you have some options. If you want to erase anything on the chip before programming then make sure the erase first box is checked. The verify post-write simply tells you whether or not the write was successful. Disable and enable write protect do just what they say. If you aren’t worried about copying over the chip or if you want to use the chip more than once then you can generally just leave these unchecked.
When you have decided on the options you wish to use (and there are more on the bottom of the app but they are fairly self explanatory) just click the [write chip] button and the programmer will do its work.
Reading from the eprom:
The TL866 will also read data from the chip. In order to do so you must first create or select a file to dump the data into. A text file works fine for this purpose but you can use any type you like. Once you have created the file just click the read button and the eprom will pull the code from the chip and put it into the file. MiniPro GUI will automatically put the code in its pseudo-terminal unless you check the box underneath that says “do not output files to terminal”. Either way, you can always open the file with any text editor you wish.
Compiling C code:
MiniPro GUI also allows you to compile C code into hex in order to write it to the chip. More specifically, it uses the avr tools that you downloaded earlier to do so. If you like, you can even write the code in the terminal of MiniPro GUI and save the output as a .c file with the save button. MiniPro GUI does not have any of the features of a full fledged IDE but it can be convenient at times for that purpose. No matter how you write the C code you can compile to .hex using MinPro GUI.
In order to compile your C code just click the button and search for your file. Once you have done that simply click on compile and the avr-gcc and avr-objcopy programs will kick in and compile your file from .c to .o to .elf and then finally to .hex. It does all of this for you in one shot. Normally you would have to compile it one step at a time. This is why the Start with… options are there. However unlikely, there may be a time when you have an .o or .elf file that you want to compile and this allows you to start with one of those.
And that is basically all there is to it. Hopefully you get a lot of usage from MiniPro GUI. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail at mailto:admin@kosciuskomedia.com you can also watch the video below. It goes a little more in depth about some the features. Enjoy.
