[General] Programmer fails to connect to the target MCU

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to program/debug/erase a Freescale MC12311 transceiver IC (which has an HCS08 MCU embedded in it) via the 6-pin BDM header, using a P&E USB Multilink Universal, and CodeWarrior 10.4 IDE, on Win7 64-bit platform. The following "power cycle" error occurs when I try to program/debug/ease the target IC:



But unfortunately, turning off/on the power doesn't help, and it fails to connect to the target.

The following picture is the schematic of my circuit, in which the red circles depict the BDM header and connections:




The following is a list of the related tries:

1. I've added 10k pull-up resistors to both BKGD and RESET lines; but no success! The same error occurs and it fails to connect to the target.
   
2. I try to turn off/on using either the main power supply, power jumpers, reset switch, etc.; but it doesn't matter; again no success!
   
3. I checked the pins on the pcb, and everything seems OK. I mean, it seems that it has been soldered without any significant problems.
   
4. I monitored both BKGD and RESET pins: some activities (going from low to high, and high to low) are monitored after I press the "erase" button on CodeWarrior IDE.
   
5. I tried to monitor the external 32 kHz and 32 MHz crystal resonators, using a 10x probe, with both an analog oscillator and a digital counter. However, no activity is observed, nothing at all! It seems that either the crystals or the respective internal circuits are dead!
   
6. The datasheet mentions that "the MCU has an internal crystal oscillator, which is enabled in every power-on-reset, without need for external components". What I understand from this part, is that the program/debug/erase step should be done without need for external crystals. This could mean that even if both of the external crystals are dead, I should theoretically be able to erase the MCU with the help of the internal oscillator. But I don't understand why it fails!
   
7. I tried to program/debug/erase this IC using another version of CodeWarrior, such as 6.3, and also on another operating system, such as Win XP, or Win7 32-bit. But again no success!! The same error occurs, and it fails to connect to the target.
   
8. There's another circuit board which uses the same MC12311 IC with almost the same components, configurations, and schematic. I tried all the mentioned steps on that board. But unfortunately, no success again! The same errors and the same failures!
   
9. I checked the power: I provide 5-6 volt external power supply; it passes through a 3v3 regulator; then it passes through a schottky diode, and the final regulated 3.1 volt powers the IC. It is mentioned in the datasheet that the accepted input voltage range is approximately 2.5 ~ 3.7. So I don't think this "3.1 volt" would cause any problems.

I really don't know what to do next to solve this challenging problem!

What should I do? I would be really grateful if you give any helpful comments or replies.

Thanks a billion for your time.

First of all, thank you for being very precise with the problem and what you have done. You did a great job of troubleshooting already.

The first trouble spot seems like it could be the resonators. I would try some different resonators at different values.

I am not sure on Codewarrior but on most other compilers you have to set the bits to determine where the clock is coming (internal or external), have you done this?

The problem could also be the logic level conversion you are doing. You are regulating the power down to the 3.1V range but what is your communication protocol running at between the programmer and controller?

cl10greg said:

First of all, thank you for being very precise with the problem and what you have done. You did a great job of troubleshooting already.

The first trouble spot seems like it could be the resonators. I would try some different resonators at different values.

I am not sure on Codewarrior but on most other compilers you have to set the bits to determine where the clock is coming (internal or external), have you done this?

The problem could also be the logic level conversion you are doing. You are regulating the power down to the 3.1V range but what is your communication protocol running at between the programmer and controller?

Click to expand...

Thank you cl10greg for your response.

Actually, the datasheet says that the internal oscillator of the MCU starts on every system reset, with no need for external components. So I suppose it should work even if the external resonators are not working properly. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

However, there's no such option in CodeWarrior IDE to set some fuse bits or so. Unfortunately, it's not as user-friendly as other IDEs like IAR or AVR Studio.

Thanks anyway for your response. I do really appreciate it.

Any other comments or replies would be highly appreciated.