United States
 

Flash Socket Boards v1.00

1 Overview

The Flash Socket Boards provide embedded systems engineers with an easy and cost-effective method of programming SPI Serial Flash memory chips. Using Total Phase’s industry-leading Cheetah TM  SPI Host Adapter, engineers can take full advantage of the Flash Center TM  programming software to program their SPI Serial Flash memory chips.

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1.1 Features

  • Flash and burn SPI Serial Flash chips that have a standard pinout and are in any of these standard chip packages: SOIC-8, SOIC-8W, or SOIC-16

  • Provides 3.3V to target device

  • Gang-program multiple devices by using multiple socket board and programming adapter sets in parallel on the same host computer.

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1.2 What’s Included

The SOIC-8/SOIC-8W Flash Socket Board and SOIC-16 Flash Socket Board are sold separately. A Flash Programming Kit is available which bundles both of the Flash Socket Boards with a Cheetah SPI Host Adapter and 10-pin split cable.

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1.3 Flash Center Software 

The Flash Center Software is a free software package that allows engineers to quickly erase, program, and verify SPI Serial Flash memory chips that are interfaced through a Cheetah SPI Host Adapter.

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Figure 1: The Flash Center Software is a free memory chip programming software

Features

  • Fast speeds - the Flash Center Software can read a typical 4 Megabyte flash memory in 0.7 seconds.

  • Gang programming support - the Flash Center Software can program multiple devices in parallel by connecting to multiple Cheetah SPI Host Adapters on the same computer.

  • Extensible device support - the Flash Center Software has an extensible XML-based memory device library. By adding or modifying the XML descriptions of target memory devices, developers can instantly support almost any I2C- or SPI-based EEPROM or Serial Flash memory.

Minimum Requirements

  • Linux (kernel 2.6 and above), Windows 2000 (SP4 or later), Windows XP (SP2 or later), Windows Vista 32-bit/64-bit, or Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit

  • One or more available High-speed USB 2.0 ports

  • One or more Cheetah SPI Host Adapters

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1.4 Cheetah SPI Host Adapter

The Cheetah SPI Host Adapter is a high-speed SPI adapter that is capable of communicating over SPI at up to 40+ MHz. The Cheetah adapter is specifically designed to communicate with high-speed, SPI-based Flash memory. It is an ideal tool to develop, debug, and program SPI-based systems.

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Figure 2: The Cheetah SPI Host Adapter is a high-speed SPI Master-only adapter. It is capable of signaling from 1 to 40+ MHz with no inter-byte delays.

Features

  • SPI Master signaling up to 40+ MHz

  • Maximum throughput with no inter-byte delays

  • User-configurable timing delays

  • Windows and Linux support

  • Free software and royalty-free API