Just stopping by to warn users of the TL866CS and TL866A universal programmers not to update to the latest firmware or buy them if they have the latest firmware AND you use Linux... Yet!

I've got one of these and updated the Windows programming software to update it, don't ask, just don't

Anyway, it's now a brick under Linux unless I can get an older firmware onto it, which probably means taking it apart.

If you're talking the original models(not the II), and firmware v03.2.85, that works for me. Mind you, that project has moved to Gitlab(A needless move, in my opinion, and insufficiently announced). If you've cloned from GitHub, I'd expect something of the kind, as you'd have a outdated version of the software if you did.

I didn't know it had moved to gitlab. In fact, having reinstalled my PC, I dutifully went and cloned and recompiled the minipro Linux SW without so much as an inkling.

Since I was so oblivious, my get out of jail plan involved flashing it with a hex file from a site explaining how to convert it to the posher (cough, cough) A model.

The newer FW in my now enlightened opinion is designed to stop us using our oen SW, they got the mardies!

There is also a thread over on StarDot forums about this which includes some advice and a useful link.

Mark

Interesting... As it happens, I'm going to post a fix for those with the PICKIT 3 or similar PIC programmer if all goes well tonight. There's that Chicken and Egg thing again.

So, it's easier if you use the TL866 updater with the update.dat file from an older version of the programmig software. Now, I took the time to install a header for ICSP and made it up to the A model. I couldn't get my PICKIT 3 to connect and would have had to do some research to make it work. I needed my programmer back quickly as it happens.

I've ordered a spare now to appease my paranoid side.

Finally, there's a project out there to totally replace the firmware with open source equivalent. I don't think it's ready for the big time but It'll make my heart sing when it is. I should give serious thought to adding a bootloader to my ToE 6502 machine now.

my tl-pro 866A's seem to have issues to report their usb-id to linux in a timely fashion for linux to recognize the device depending on how fast the plug is inserted (booting up the computer with the thing already attached supplies power to the thing before usb gets scanned so that solves that)... not a problem on wintendo, also they don't finish boot if a chip is already in them (the led keeps blinking) they're not entirely bug-free. but still better than anything else on the market.

highly doubt the thing is a 'brick' under linux.

if you're getting 'device not found' or it's not listed as the right thing just try plugging it in before turning the computer on. probably the usb device scan race condition thing.
unless autoelectric did something else and finally got their own usb-vendor id instead of pretending to be a microchip picstart programmer on microchip's vendor-id. (the minipro software is fairly simple and such things are easily changed in it, as is implementing new target or custom target chips. the sourcecode is fairly straightforward).

them things not always being found is a pain in the butt tho. they should just get detected with or without a chip in it under all conditions (After all they also make great storage space for your bitcoin private keys, nobody suspects an eeprom and you can read them out with a bunch of leds and switches powered by a few nails in a potato after the war.. but for that they have to work with the chip in them the entire time (they definately are cheap enough to just use as an 'eeprom drive'

I ended up booting a Windows machine to (ahem) down revision it's firmware. Since autoelectric.cn did the latest firmware to nobble upgraders and pirates, throwing the Linux users on the heap with them, I took the time to up mine to the A version. I wouldn't have bothered if everything worked as it should have.

don't think they'd do an upgrade against 'pirates' considering that they themselves have moved on to the tl866-II by now.
if it's the 'failed to enumerate device' stuff then that started occuring a bunch of firmware versions ago already and is more like a race condition between the thing getting power, starting to respond to things, and the timeouts of the usb driver itself. maybe putting a switch on it to feed it the 5v before putting it on the usb databus would solve that. i usually just turn the computer off and turn it back on with the tlpro already attached. (then it gets power long before the kernel starts talking to the usb and everything works fine).

guess things went a bit out of hand for autoelectric. what clearly started as some side product to facilitate the programming of some car parts (everything else they sell seems to be related to ECU's and ODB-II) somehow hijacked the entire market for eprom programmers and became the de-facto standard guess their q&a and support departments didn't grow along with that

I guess not! Given that the hardware is rather well documented, doesn't use hard to get or custom parts, and that there's open source FW being developed, I think they're getting desperate. I wish any company doing the world a good deal a happy outcome, I just don't think they played this situation intelligently.

The hacker/maker community needs a cheap way to program stuff or it'll be hobbled and the TL866's fill that void. I couldn't have built my ToE computer without a programmer, and our communities will grow much more slowly without. I bet you need them too.