Is this possible to do with a bootloader?

Design Concepts
1

Hello all,

I recently had a crazy idea about programming my PIC, using a bootloader, from an EEPROM. I’ve never even attempted to write a bootloader before, and so its new territory for me. I’ve read over Microchips bootloader paper in PDF format, and its somewhat confusing. ( http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1824&appnote=en012031 )

See, I would like to be able to burn my programs to an EEPROM, and then ‘plug’ them into my PIC system and have it program itself from there. The problem is, I don’t know if this can technically work.

Does anyone here have any bootloader programming experience? I’m all ears as to whether this will work.

Thanks everyone,

-Flecko

2

Hi,

from the technical point of view this is possible, you could already try to preload a small flash range with the MIOS_BANKSTICK_PageRead and and MIOS_FLASH_Write functions. Once this is working, you could take the required source codes in order to create the bootloader.

This isn’t trivial if you’ve never worked with assembly language before…

Best Regards, Thorsten.

3

Thanks for the quick reply Thorsten.

I have plenty of experience with asm. I just wasn’t sure, from a technical point of view, if it was possible. I’ll just need to do alot more research now before I actually start on this project.

If it ever comes to fruition, I’ll be sure to post about it here.

Thanks again!

-Flecko