Hi!
I am new to these forums. I just recently purchased a hexapod 3-r and a SSC-32 and a Bot Board with the Basic Atom. The SSC-32 works great. The problem is the Bot Board and the Basic Atom. The Basic Atom IDE will not Compile/Program/Debug. It always says there is not a Atom chip. I thought it was a communications problem , but I can talk to my SSC-32, my Xilinx FPGA dev board, and my ARM dev kit with no problems. Any clues on what can be going on. I talked it over with Jim and he asked me to check to see if it was gettingf voltage ( the Atom ) and indeed it is getting voltage on pin 27. Any other ideas? I saw on the Basic Micro site some people were having this issue and resolving it with dropping their FIFOs down to 0. That did not solve the problem for me either.
Update: If I jumper the speaker it will make a noise once on reset of the chip and then a few seconds later start making a constant clipping sound. No clue if this helps.
I have no answer. If you had a āknown goodā Atom, you could try that one to narrow down the problem. Do you have any other microcontrollers other than the Atom that you could try?
No sadly no other STAMP style microcontrollers that will fit this socket. Plenty of other larger style systems, but not STAMP type. Thus far it looks as if it might have to make a return trip to Jim, to see if he is able to figure it out. The only thing I can think of is the bot carrier board is bad or the STAMP itself.
Question to the STAMP experts: Do most of yall use Atom or Atom Pro?
The noise you are hearing is the test code we program every Atom with before it ships. It basically blinks every I/O line in a specific pattern so we know all I/Os are working correctly. Basically means your Atom is functional.
As for the communications problems you are having, what kind of computer are you using(laptop/desktop/homebuilt etc)? Are you using a standard Serial port or USB adapter?
The Atom uses 115200bps to program. All the other devices you mention that work run at a much slower rate so that doesnāt necessarily eliminate the comport as the problem.
The machine I am using right now is a new Sun Ultra 20 ( using the Opteron proc ) it is running XP professional X64. It has a PCI multi I/O card in it with 2 serial and 1 parallel port. The chip on the multi I/O is NetMos. In the hardware settings for the COM port I have FIFO set all the way down (1) and the default settings for COM port are 115.2 8,N,1. In the settings for BasicMicro IDE I only see a COM port setting and debug speed. Debug speed I had set at 56k ( which I saw posted somewhere ). And yes the board does support high speed, the ARM dev board using uboot transfers at 115.2 same with the Xilinx board.
Wow Brian, You have checked it all! I am curious as to what the problem is. When you figure it out, I want to know for the future.
Did you check and double check the jumpers on the MiniAB board? There are alot of jumpers on there and you need to pay close attention to not just the pins but the orientation of the jumpers Jumpers can go on vertical ā|ā or horizontal ā_ā. Look at botom of page 3:
If all is ok then Iām thinking it is something wrong with either the Bot Board or the Atom microprossor. All could be functioning except the communications part of the circuit some how some where. If only you had a stamp module lying around, then you could narow it down to the board or serial cable.
I also just checked another board with the baud rate issue. I have my SSC-32 running at 115.2k and it is running smooth as silk. So it seems wierd.
BTW I am working on a set of .Net components both visual and non-visual to interact with the SSC-32. They should be ready in about a week ( I hope ). If anyone is interested.
Troubleshooting is a process of elimination. If you have another machine at your disposal you could attempt to program the Atom using it. If it works, you can eliminate the Atom and Bot Board from the equation. If it doesnāt work you can send those soldiers back here for a serious talking to.
Well Iām afraid it could very well be XP64 causing the problem. The main difference between you talking to the SSC-32 at 115kbps and program the Atom is we use the RTS line to control the reset of the Atom to get it into boot programming mode. If that reset signal and a special break is not received within certain timeings the Atom will not get into programming mode. We have not tested and donāt yet certify the Atom/AtomPro software on 64bit machines. I suspect something in XP64s compatibility mode may be messing with the timings of the RTS signal and BREAK signals we are sending. Either that or the Serial adapter board is causing a problem. You can try a couple other things. Get a USB to Serial adapter and see if that works(I recomend the BAFO BF-810, cheap and works). Check you serial cable if it didnāt come with the Atom make sure it has the RTS signal line. If it doesnāt youāll never get into programming mode. Try it on XP(32bit version) and on a different computer(preferably one running 98/ME/2000/XP(32bit version) since those OSs have been tested. I assume the Sun box doesnāt have a serial port on the motherboard but if it does try that one too.
It probably will most likely either be XP64 or the PCI Multi I/O card or itās drivers(back to XP64 again).
Ahhhhā¦
Have you tried the chocolate install, yet?
If that doesnāt work, try drop-kicking your computer.
It has a 0.009% chance of actually fixing the problem, but it has a 100% chance of making you feel better. (Unless you kick it too hard and hurt your foot.)
Change the reset hold time. Under Preferences click Advanced. Then increase the reset hold time. Default is 5(in milliseconds). Iād try 15,25,50 and 100. I was forcible reminded of this today. I was using a new AtomPro24 prototype that uses the H8-3694 processor and found out after several hours of debugging that I had to simply increase the reset old time to get that prototype to work. Ugh.
Just tried that andā¦It didnt work. I hope I am not being a royal pain in the butt. AcidTech thanks so far for the wonderful support. If you got any more sage advice toss it on over this way. I will keep trying to figure something out but thus far it looks like the magic smoke was never in the board or the Atom.
Weāll Iāve used up all my normal problem cures. At this point since you canāt get it to work on a second computer and tried everything Iāve already gone over I recommend you give us a call tomorrow to arrange shipping that unit back for a test and or replacement.
If it doesnāt work you can send those soldiers back here for a serious talking to. 
Muha ha ha.
