[hpsdr] Updating Mercury Firmware

[Jim Sanford]

All:

I have a Metis board and a Mercury board that came with "old" firmware. 
(2.9 for Mercury)

I successfully used HPSDRProgrammer V 2.0.4.10 to update Meteis. 
Although the title bar says it is a nopcap version, I had previously 
installed WinPCAP on my Winders10 64-bit machine.

Although the HPSDR page /suggests/ that HPSDRProgrammer can be used to 
update Mercury,

I could not get it to recognize the Mercury board.

Following the instructions on pages 19 - 20 of the Metis manual (V1.4), 
I used HPSDRBootloader version 2.0.4.4 to update Mercury. It correctly 
detected Mercury and informed me that Mercury was at firmware version 
2.9.  NOTE:  Although the Mercury manual (v 1.0) says I should see two 
of the 3 LEDs on the right hand of the "horizontal" string of LEDs in 
the "upper-right-hand" quadrant of the Mercury board (near the input 
BNC), I saw three, with the two right-hand LEDs blinking.  I could not 
find in any manual what this means.

Following the update instructions in the Metis manual, I:

1.  Powered off the ATLAS board.

2.  Installed JP1 on the Metis board.

3.  Installed JP7 (LAST JTAG) on the Mercury board.

4.  Powered up the ATLAS board.

5.  Ran HPSDRBootloader, which correctly detected the Mercury board and 
reported firmware at version 2.9.  (Latest is 3.4). Note that the 
bootloader says I need Administrator priveleges, which I have.  
(Windows10 does not give me a "run as administrator" option, but I have 
verified that my account has administrator priveleges.)

6.  Updated the Mercury board with version 3.4 rbf file, which I had 
years ago used to update other Mercury boards.  The upgrade appeared to 
go successfully, in terms of writing.  I did see the "erasing flash" 
message per the example on page 19 of the Metis manual, then another set 
of "writing" reports, and finally a message to remove jumper J1 on Metis 
and then power cycle.  At this point, the second LED from left on 
Mercury is flashing, the next two are on solid, and the third from right 
is on solid.

7.  Per the instructions on page 20 of the Metis manual, I shut down 
power and removed JP1 on the Metis board.  (Says nothing about JP7 on 
Mercury.)  I then reapplied power to the Atlas board, expecting code to 
be written to the target board.  I now see the far left LED  on Mercury 
on solid, the 2nd and 3rd LEDs from right flashing at different rates, 
and the 4th from right on solid.

8.  I then powered off the Atlas bus and removed the "last JTAG" jumper 
on Mercury.  Powering back up, I see the far left LED on Mercury on 
solid, the 2nd and 3rd from LEDs from the right flashing at different 
rates, and the 4th from the right on solid. (In prior attempts, I would 
see ALL LEDs near the BNC connector dimly lit and HPSDR would refuse to 
start, stating "bad firmware, v0.0" for all boards.

9.  This time, HPSDR starts and appears to work (I see noise with no 
antenna connected.)

Notes:

1.  This is a 2-slot Atlas board intended to be used for updating other 
boards.  Per instructions, Metis is farthest from the power connector.

2.  The Mercury TCXO is selected by jumper and in HPSDR seytup. The 
Mercury 122 MHz clock is selected in HPSDR Setup.

3.  I have audio (noise) output on both line and earphone outputs.

4.  I see a small 10MHz spur (-128dbm or so), which I expect based on 
notes using the onboard TCXO.

5.  A 9.9 MHz -60dbm signal from my HP 8657B sign gen shows up at 9.9 
MHz and -54dbm -- probably a close as I can expect, given that the sign 
gen is 2 years away from calibration.

So, questions:

1.  Am I doing something wrong?  I'm troubled by the LEDs acting 
different than on page 4 of the Mercury manual, version 1.0. (Green LEDs 
are lit as expected.)  Yet, the receiver /appears/ to be working.

2.  How can I tell what version of firmware I actually have in Mercury?  
The HPSDRBootloader doesn't tell me, only that it detected Mercury.  The 
HPSDRProgrammer does not detect the Mercury, only Metis.  This /appears/ 
correct, since somewhere the documentation alludes to the Programmer 
detecting "anything with an ethernet port".

3.  Is there a way to update Mercury, Penny et al with the 
HPSDRProgrammer and not messing with jumpers?  The online documentation 
/suggests/ this, but does not explicitly so state or tell me how.

Thanks & 73,

Jim

wb4gcs at amsat.org





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