GunFire - chip programmer software / News: Recent posts

If you're looking for IOAccess, check http://portio.sourceforge.net. The library's been renamed "get_io".

I've split off the IOAccess DLL, plus all the other PC platform-level stuff, into the PortIO project. This library-type stuff is obviously reuseable on other projects (and the hits and downloads seem to show that people are finding it useful), so it doesn't make sense to shoehorn it into GunFire. GunFire will simply use the interface stuff provided by PortIO.... read more

Another advance - the IoAccess DLL is done, allowing the program to dig out port details from the registry. Add the PortTalk DLL, and this is everything needed to finish off parallel port support (except for the time to put it together :-) The remaining work now is just filling in parallel port support and putting together the PIC16F877 programming algorithm, and then version 0.1 will be ready to go.

The program is now using wxWindows. All strings have been converted to use wxString, and DLL support now uses wxDynamicLibrary. The only place using the old C/C++ strings is the error handler, and I don't see much point in messing with that right now.

There's also been some reworking of the DLL support to get a better architecture for the class type handlers.

Three main things left to do now for the alpha: fully implement parallel port handling; add the PIC programming algorithm (probably copying much of it from some other program); and put on a minimal front end.

Finally got something that'll toggle pins on a parallel port programmer. OK, much of the programming interfacing is stub code, but the fact that it works at all is something. Getting towards alpha nicely.

I got hacked off with file support being baked into the main program, so that's now been moved to DLL support as it should be, and a DLL for Intel HEX file support is done. This caused some bother until I got exporting of a library file sorted for the application, so that the DLLs could use classes defined by the application.... read more

I think I've finally got the programming interface done, both for the device and programmer. All set up and ready to go.

The translator to get the two to talk will be a complex bit of code. For the moment I'm going to stub it with something simple to get a prototype working. Then I'll write the support DLLs for the PIC16F877 and ProPIC2 programmer, and at that point I'll finally have something that messes with voltages, which will be a great milestone for the project!... read more

OK, I've got the design pretty much sorted for physical and electrical. Coding is in progress to get the structure built for this. The main thing is to have all the interfaces in place, then I can just put in stub functions for now and come back to it later. I don't plan on actually implementing auto-configuration until later - the main thing is to have the design and all the inputs and outputs hooked up, so I can add it in later without having to do a big tear-up on the whole design.... read more

Wierd - I'm sure a news item went up for this earlier, but SF seems to have lost it.

Anyway, I'm currently working out what needs to get passed around for the automagic compatibility check on devices and programmers to work. As you can imagine, this is non-trivial! :-) I haven't touched code for a while - all the development is in Word. So far it's looking good, but it's taking a lot of thinking about and little visible progress. The key is that I want to get it generic for every device/programmer with as few adjustable parameters as possible.... read more

Finally got DLL access sorted to my satisfaction. It's now slick enough that adding support for another class type (eg. classes for loading/saving data) will be a few minutes work at most. The code is not simple (5k lines including comments), but the interface is very neat so all the detail is well-hidden from the user, there's full checking to make it as bomb-proof as possible, and it'll be easy to reuse this on any future project. I'm quite proud of this code. :-)... read more

Since I split GunFire and GunProg, I've been doing some work on the DLL system to make it more portable (so I don't ever have to write DLL-handling code again! :-) This is mostly done now, and is ready enough to upload. I should (shortly) have this finished.

After that, it's onwards to the dreaded programming stuff. I've been putting that off for a month or so while I've been improving the DLL handling, but soon I'll be all out of excuses, and then it'll all be moving a step closer to the mythical alpha release.... read more

GunFire has split off from GunProg. It became apparent that the GunProg software could be made generic to support any programmer hardware for little extra work. This is a rather different goal from the GunProg project, so it made sense to split the hardware and software into two separate projects.