Using the ICD-U40 with linux

update: I modified the script to allow a filename to be passed to it for immediate flashing.

The ICD-U40 is an in-circuit programmer for Microchip PIC processors, and the company that makes it,CCS, was nice enough to provide linux drivers for the beast. However, there doesn’t seem to be any documentation on the product. Here are the steps that I took to get it working on my system (Ubuntu Feisty Fawn x86_64):

1. First download the driver from the manufacturers website and extract the files to a temporary location:
http://www.ccsinfo.com/downloads.php

2. Plug in the device and note which port it shows up on:

~$ dmesg
...
[276383.429792] usb 5-4.3: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 22
[276383.472990] usb 5-4.3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[276383.473075] ftdi_sio 5-4.3:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[276383.473080] drivers/usb/serial/ftdi_sio.c: Detected FT8U232AM
[276383.473179] usb 5-4.3: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

For me, it shows up as ttyUSB0. If the device is not recognized, you will need to add the ftdi module to your kernel.

3. Clobber an unused serial terminal, and symlink it to the one that the device uses:
The program is apparently hardwired to only use the serial ports ttyS0 – ttyS7. To get the program to recognize the device, one of these serial ports will have to be symlinked to the actual device (determined in step 2). There is an elegant solution on the ccs website, however an easy hack is to just make the link manually (note that this will have to be performed each time the device is removed/plugged back in):

~$ cd /dev
/dev$ sudo rm ttyS3
/dev$ sudo ln -s ttyUSB0 ttyS3
/dev$ ls -l ttyS3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2007-09-26 23:20 ttyS3 -> ttyUSB0

4. Get a better launcher script :
The launcher script (icd_linux) is fairly simple and assumes that the program will be installed in a single users directory, and that a file named Tex3.hex will be flashed. Here is a slightly nicer one that allows the program to be installed in a central location (say, /usr/local/icd-linux), while storing the configuration files in the users home directory (do this in the temporary directory where the files were extracted to in step 1):

~/temp/icd-linux$ wget http://www.cibomahto.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/icd-linux.txt -O icd-linux
~/temp/icd-linux$ chmod 755 icd-linux

note: In case this file is no longer available, I have placed the contents of this script at the end of this post.

5. Copy the files to the /usr/local directory (do this in the temporary directory where the files were extracted to in step 1):

~/temp/icd-linux$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/icd-linux
~/temp/icd-linux$ sudo cp -R ./ /usr/local/icd-linux
~/temp/icd-linux$ sudo ln -s  /usr/local/icd-linux/icd-linux /usr/local/bin/icd-linux

6. Run the program
Assuming that /usr/local/bin is in your path, you should be able to run the program at any time now using the command icd-linux. Settings will be saved in the directory .icd-linux, which should be placed in your home directory. To remove the program, simply delete the /usr/local/icd-linux directory and the icd-linux symlink in the /usr/local/bin directory.

Appendix: icd-linux script for step 4:

#!/bin/bash

# Set these to correspond to whatever is most appropriate for you
INSTALLED_PATH=/usr/local/icd-linux
SETTINGS_PATH=$HOME/.icd-linux
ARGS=+debuglog

# If an argument was passed, assume it is a filename.  Expand the path to
# an absolute path (so the icd will be able to find it), and add it to the
# argument list.
if [ "$#" -eq 1 ]; then
    if [ -f $1 ]; then
        DIRNAME=`dirname $1`
        FULLDIRNAME=`cd $DIRNAME; pwd`
        FILENAME=`basename $1`
        ARGS="/T"$FULLDIRNAME/$FILENAME" "$ARGS
    fi
fi

# Create the config directory and walk to there so that the program stores
# he config and log files locally
if [ ! -d $SETTINGS_PATH ]; then
    mkdir $SETTINGS_PATH

    if [ ! -d $SETTINGS_PATH ]; then
        echo Error creating settings directory: $SETTINGS_PATH
        echo Please create this directory manually and then re-run the script.
        exit
    fi
fi

cd $SETTINGS_PATH

# change the LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that it can find its libraries
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$INSTALLED_PATH/so

# symlink the files it needs into the config directory
rm -f $SETTINGS_PATH/icd $SETTINGS_PATH/devices.dat $SETTINGS_PATH/spbu.bmp
ln -s $INSTALLED_PATH/icd $SETTINGS_PATH/icd
ln -s $INSTALLED_PATH/devices.dat $SETTINGS_PATH/devices.dat
ln -s $INSTALLED_PATH/spbu.bmp $SETTINGS_PATH/spbu.bmp

if [ -e ./icd -a -e ./devices.dat -a -e ./spbu.bmp ]; then 
    ./icd $ARGS
else
    echo Error copying files, please make sure that icd-linux is installed
    echo in the directory: $INSTALLED_PATH.
fi

# then clean up the linked files
rm -f $SETTINGS_PATH/icd $SETTINGS_PATH/devices.dat $SETTINGS_PATH/spbu.bmp