Nifty FRDM OpenSDA Tera Term Console Hint

[myke_predko]

I tend to leave Tera Term up and working as I do software development on a FRDM board and periodically experience the problem of having the Tera Term's font being inadvertently changed during FRDM OpenSDA programming by an accidental VT100 "SO" (Shift Out) command being sent as a programming string.  Tera Term works as a VT100 (or other terminal) emulator so this isn't something you can easily disable.

I figured out a simple preventative measure for it; in KSDK2, after the "BOARD_InitDebugConsole();" statement in "main.c", add:

PRINTF("%c%c", 0x16, 0x0F);  //  Send VT100 "SI" Character String to Console

This will ensure that normal ASCII characters are displayed during program execution.

To show what I mean, in the Term Term Screen shot:

After programming the "text after "IMPORTANT" is garbled in the first execution.  (The "0.82.9.^.01" string is used to make sure the issue is in the build before I print the "IMPORTANT" string, normally, I would put the "PRINTF" statement given above right after basic initialization and before any messages are sent to the Tera Term console.

After that, I added the PRINTF statement given above before the "IMPORTANT" string PRINTF and the text comes out cleanly as you can see at the bottom of the screen shot.

You can avoid the need for this by doing a "Reset Terminal" (under the "Control" pull down in Tera Term) but this is an easy way to eliminate any action on your part.

[ZhangJennie]

Hi,

to solve your problem, can you please send us:

1. your KDS version.

2. which FRDM board so you work with?

3. your demo project.

I will test it from my side. thanks!

Have a great day,
Jennie Zhang

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[myke_predko]

Hi Jennie,

• KDS 3.1.0
• KSDK 2.0
• FRDM-K22F
• Tera-Term 4.89

Two things:

First, can I send you the project directly (you can email me at myke.predko@mimetics.ca with how you would like it, I can send it via email, WeTransfer or to an FTP server)?  I will probably open source the software with the product, but I do not want to release what I'm working on right now.   In main.c, you can see that I have a number of different options for putting in the SO string as well as commenting them out. 

Secondly, I would imagine the appropriate fix is to eliminate the echoing of the program bytes from the processor being programmed back through the OpenSDA processor.  This would eliminate the garbage characters that come up during programming (and, sometimes are the VT100 "SI" string). 

I've seen this issue in a variety of different applications I've done with the software above and it's a bit of a pain, but only requires two bytes to resolve. 

Let me know how I can send you the source,

myke

[ZhangJennie]

Hi Myke

I just sent you my email.

Best Regards,

Jennie

[myke_predko]

Hi Jennie,

I've sent you a WeTransfer of the files.  Let me know if you have any issues with it. 

Sorry it took so long, this past week has been insanely busy.

myke