Electronics - MSP430 - Restoring the default software

Once you've received your MSP430 board, you couldn't stop playing with it, clicking on every button, downloading all software you could find.

But at a moment, you said to yourself: "Eh, how can I do to restore the default software?"

That's what we're going to see in this tutorial to restore the demo default software.

With IAR Embedded Workbench IDE

Go where you installed your IAR IDE.

For example, let's assume this location:

  • D:\soft\mcu\iar\ewmsp430

In the following path, you could certainly find a directory of your board:

  • D:\soft\mcu\iar\ewmsp430\430\examples\examples\Hardware boards

My board is a MSP430 LaunchPad MSP-EXP430G2 and what I have to do is to open this MSP-EXP430G2 directory.

Inside there is another MSP-EXP430G2 directory, let's open it to find what we are looking for:

  • workspace.eww

Double click it, and your IAR IDE should open the workspace to compile and load the default software in your board.

Conclusion

The default software was hidden, but we succeeded in finding it.
Good job, you've just restored the default software in your MSP430 board! wink

Comments

Comment: 

Thank you for providing this app note.  I just started with the LaunchPad and IAR IDE, and I am getting nowhere.  I am having problems with compiling and loading the default software.  I can find the file and load it into IAR IDE, but then I am not sure what to do.  Is there a chance you could provide me with a few additional steps?  I apologize for asking this, but I am getting nowhere.  Once I get familiar with the overall process I am sure I will get better.  Thank you for your assistance.

Comment: 

Hello George,

Let's try to help to find your way.

First of all, could you please tell me what is your microcontroller?

Look on your board, in the middle there is a black rectangle component.
On it is written something like this: M430G2553.

Once you get this value, open your IAR IDE and open the workspace.eww that you've already opened in the tutorial.

Then in the menu, click Project > Options > General Options > Target.

There on Device part, you have to select the correct device that you could find on your microcontroller.
It has to be exactly the same.

Click OK.

Reclick Project > Rebuild All.

On the console window if you had no error, then click the green triangle on the menu bar (near the red round) to download the software into the board.

The debugger will stop at void main(void) step.

On the left of the red cross (on the menu bar) there is a Go button (3 blue arrows), click it.

If you succeeded until there I think the default software is now in your board. cool

Comment: 

Thank you for the reply.  I confirmed the device as noted.  When I try to Rebuild, an error of "Failed to create output directory..." is displayed for Exe, Obj, and List.  I suppose for some reason I am not writing files to the proper places.  I will keep looking and see what I come up with.  Thank you for your assistance.

Comment: 

The IAR IDE appears to have problems. There was absolutely no problem when restoring the firmware using Code Composer Studio. Thank you.

Comment: 

That error is related to permissions (at least in my case). Just launch IAR with admin rights (right click iar icon -> run as administrator). After that everything works as expected.

Comment: 

CCS is a great tool too.
Free to you to use it. smiley

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