mc9s12a128 & e128. Are MCUs supplied with LRAE or monitor in flash?

[bobz]

Can anyone quickly tell me whether the mc9s12e128 and the mc9s12a128 chips are supplied by freescale preprogrammed with;-
a) the LRAE (Load ram and execute) bootloader (see AN2546/D), or
b) the Serial Monitor Program (see AN2548/D)

Background info:

My Tech.Arts(T.A) adapt9s12e128 eval board has (b) in it, but that may be programmed by T.A.

The TA Adapt9s12e128 documentation section 3.9 says "Since the 2k serial monitor is included on chip..".

The mc9s12e128(p99 sec10) and mc9s12a128(p88 sec17) Device User Guides say - "It is planned that most devices made after Q1 of 2004 will be shipped with the LRAE " which is option (a) above.

Obviously I should look at a new chips memory, when I get one, but for now it would be a great help if someone could say if a or b above applies.

Message Edited by bobz on 04-19-200601:58 PM

[EMontanez]

bobz,

That is an excellent question. I'll find out about LRAE and post as soon as I find out.

For a fact, I know that a lot of 3rd party tool vendors like T.A. ship our HCS12 devices with the HCS12 Serial Monitor programmed. This is done at the tool manufacturer and not by Freescale factory. To confirm if the serial monitor is preloaded please ask the tool vendor directly. Most of the time the cd or documentation that comes with the board notes it.

[bobz]

Thanks for your help on this E'

I am most interested in what happens when you buy the MCU's in 100's 'on their own' from a Freescale distributor.

Your kind reply suggests that when I buy Freescale MCU's, from a Freescale distributor, there is no 'tool manufacturer' involved, and so I would most likley end up with either a blank flash or a flash with the LRAE in it. I look forward to discovering from you which it is, and/or whether there's a bit more to it.

The relative merits of the excellent monitor vs the LRAE could make an interesting future discussion.

[EMontanez]

bobz,

Turns out the decision to include LRAE was reversed. Therefore, it was never implemented into the distribution of HCS12 products. I have sent a request for the docs to be updated. I apologize for any inconvenience. So all products that you buy from a distributor will be blank.

Tell you what, a good BDM programmer and/or the serial monitor will do the trick!

[bobz]

Thats great thanks, using bdm was always 'plan A' anyway for initial programming. Now we know the flash is blank we know bdm is the only option for initial programming which is fine since a bdm connector will be fitted on our board and we were never considering not having a bdm programmer.

I was mostly interested in whether the monitor was pre-programmed because it's excellent. It seemed wise to take advantage of it ASAP once I could get a handle on whether or not it was there from the start and how likely that flash is to change.

Secondly, once  on the board, I was interested in simple but safe ways of utilizing the monitor from the application so that the application could use the serial port for itself and for reprogramming the application in flash.

The obvious solution is to learn from the dbug12 monitor code and the various associated app notes on the  www.freescale.com  and www.Technologicalarts.ca websites.

Thanks again.

[HansenOnDk]

Our distributor always proposed us the programming of the MCU with our code before it comes to our factory. We have never used this opportunity as the code changes too (oh definitely too) often. But it seems that they can insert also Freescale's LRAE.

Ask your distributor for it. And I ask mine tomorrow as well.

Tadek

[bobz]

We've since moved away from using the Freescale device in favor of an ST www.st.com RISC device; the ARM STR712 with ARM7TDMI core. In fact since my last post Ive rewritten the s/w for our product on this target using GNU based tools. A couple of semi relevant points are;

a) My own 3K byte 115k baud serial port loader resides in the secondary 16k byte flash bank and programs firmware into the primary 128k byte bank in 22s, 4s of which is erase time. This is much faster than the minutes taken by JTAG(BDM equivalent). This affords us the option of doing all our programming in-house and allows customers to upgrade firmware on site without chip-fiddling.

b) In the long run we may use one the companies that program chips of any make in any quantities for suprisingly low cost. So one could get the loader preprogrammed or everything programmed for llittle difference in cost.