Hi guys,
I'm trying to get an USB bootloader going on a 18F4550 on my EasyPIC4 board. As many others starting with this USB-thing I ran into problems.

I downloaded the bootloader .hex file for 20Mhz crystal from the USB Bitwacker project site, this .hex is supposed to work with '4550 (and I believe it does but more on that later). Then I downloaded the Microchip USB framework 1.3 (MCHPFSUSB_Setup_v1.3.exe)and installed it on my PC. Finally I flashed the PIC with bootloader .hex file using the programmer on board the EasyPIC4 and it's associated software.

Finally I connected the board to the PC....ding dong.....new device found and it magically installed the driver - really, can it be this easy??

To get the device into bootload mode you're supposed to pull RC2 low when the device boots, I did that and could then select the board in the PICDEM(TM) FS USB Demo tool application - so far so good. The two status LED's connected to RC0 and RC1 also started to flash sequentially. I wipped up a quick PBP program, compiled it, loaded the .hex file into the PICDEM application and hit Program Device - success! This is why I think that bootlader .hex and chip is (or atleast was) working.

My program, however, didn't run. I quickly figured out it might be because I forgot to add the DEFINE RESET_ORG 800h and I may have accidently overwritten the bootloader.....and therefor also the config word with the oscillator settings etc.


Finally to the point. Since that mistake I can NOT get the PC to properly connect to the board. I've reflashed the bootloader several time, I've uninstalled and reinstalled the Microchip drivers and application but every time I connect the USB cable (no matter to which USB port) it does recognise it as a Custom Microchip USB device but it doesn't work. Sometimes I get a message"balloon" saying something like This device does not function properly and it shows there's something wrong with the device in the device manager. The two status LEDs on the board also now blinks together instead of sequentially.

I've added 0.22uF extra decoupling on VUsb but that didn't help either.

Is there anybody out there that might have an idea of what's going on here?

Thanks a lot!
/Henrik.

By the way, if I do a search on 'USB' the search engine returns a bunch of threads located in the sub-forum [i]USB[/u] but if I navigate to the USB subforum from there's only three threads showing. What am I missing?