[Defcon 17] State of Next Year's Competition?

[L34h]

Hi there - so I noticed that the Freescale Page for the Codewarrior USB Tap for DSCs has been taken down due to the whole Freescale/Trade Commission fiasco. Since DT and Kingpin are saying that next year's badge will feature the same MCU/DSC on the badge (or so it's been said around the grapevine), I'm guessing this makes badgehacking significantly harder for people who didn't splurge for the USB TAP while it was still available?

I guess what I'm asking is - will next year's badge feature the same brain even if Freescale goes under?

[bombnav]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

Read this. http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/...sp?code=ITCWEB
Looks like they will be out of these until SEP 2010. I got mine, but I ordered the demo board for the badge chip. Wonder if that is still avail.

Well I have one and it will be avail for use in the HHV next year so if nothing else there is one people can use. This just makes hacking the badge even better in my opinion.

I want to see someone next year use the DC 14 thru 18 badges as one hack. That would be cool.

Hi there - so I noticed that the Freescale Page for the Codewarrior USB Tap for DSCs has been taken down due to the whole Freescale/Trade Commission fiasco. Since DT and Kingpin are saying that next year's badge will feature the same MCU/DSC on the badge (or so it's been said around the grapevine), I'm guessing this makes badgehacking significantly harder for people who didn't splurge for the USB TAP while it was still available?

I guess what I'm asking is - will next year's badge feature the same brain even if Freescale goes under?

[L34h]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

This just makes hacking the badge even better in my opinion.

Heh heh, no complaints here - one of my teammates shelled out for one riiiight before it was marked "no longer available". But what about those unfortunate souls looking to start next year?

Multi-year badge hack?! What, you mean a POV TV-B-Gone with alternating Blue LED Eyes that grooves to the music only when all its Uber/Goon/Contest friends are around? Sweet! :D

[bombnav]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

Yea using the 5 electronic badges together would be really cool.

Smitty H. you out there? You seem to come up with ways of making things happen.

Who knows what next years badge will have. I guess we will have to wait 11 months to find out from the early release of info again (if we are lucky).

In the mean time I suggest everyone practice soldering small wires on pads and chip legs to get in shape.

Heh heh, no complaints here - one of my teammates shelled out for one riiiight before it was marked "no longer available". But what about those unfortunate souls looking to start next year?

Multi-year badge hack?! What, you mean a POV TV-B-Gone with alternating Blue LED Eyes that grooves to the music only when all its Uber/Goon/Contest friends are around? Sweet! :D

[YenTheFirst]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

hmm. Couldn't someone outside the U.S. purchase these and resell them to Defcon attendees?

Also: I only have a serial programmer, but as long as there's still a bootloader next year, anyone's free to borrow it!

[Kingpin]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

hmm. Couldn't someone outside the U.S. purchase these and resell them to Defcon attendees?

Also: I only have a serial programmer, but as long as there's still a bootloader next year, anyone's free to borrow it!

Doh! That could be a real PITA. I was planning for next year to have the JTAG connector a little easier to access (in order to use the USB TAP) for those that either brick their badge or want to use the JTAG interface (for real programming, debugging, etc.) instead of the static serial bootloader (which will also still be available, assuming we do use the same part :)

I'll talk to my contacts at Freescale and see if there is some available stock somewhere that they could maybe offer or hold for people.

Joe

[charliex]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

I've got one still with the demo board, i did get it from freescale, but a couple of places had them at the time too.

arrow/mouser/digikey and future electronics spring to mind.

future only seem to have the demo board now.

avnet have 3 in stock
https://avnetexpress.avnet.com/store...C56F8006DEMO-T

MC56F8006DEMO-T is the demo board with the tap

[simap]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

avnet have 3 in stock

I checked the other vendors mentioned, none seem to either carry the part, or are out of stock.

I just bought one from avnet and the qty is still @ 3. Hope the order goes through!

Never having worked with jtag stuff before, will any programmer work? I recall a talk @ dc17 about an open source jtag programmer, but it conflicted with something else.

[L34h]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

Never having worked with jtag stuff before, will any programmer work? I recall a talk @ dc17 about an open source jtag programmer, but it conflicted with something else.

Ok, so the easy answer to your question is no: each programmer is not only proprietary to each company, but it's also normally specifically for one family of chips. This is the case with the Freescale Codewarrior USBTAP - this one is especially cool because it allows you to view all the register/memory information which makes debugging a whole lot easier.

But Chapter 20 of the MC56F8006 Reference Manual has all the info you'll need if you want to build your own homebrew programmer.

[charliex]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

avnet are reporting 2 now, so it looks like you lucked out.

I wonder if the homebrew ones will still work with codewarrior, they've been really fussy about that sort of thing in the past, they even macrovision protect the free version.

At least next year i'm hoping that i'll actually have the right BMD for the project, i've got quite the collection going now . Haven't picked up a renesas one yet, since i typically just use the serial lines.

[FlyBoy2]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

So, let me understand. The USB Tap is no longer available for this processor? Arg! I really liked the free devel. environment this year. Anyone have a suggestion for another Freescale processor to look at that also has a free devel. environment?

It still seems that I can buy the devel. board off the Freescale site. So, I guess I do not understand what is going on. I did read the press release on the Freescale site.

Should we give up on this processor?

[Kingpin]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

Here's the response from Freescale:

This was mistakenly pulled down, and not affected by the ITC ruling, so
you should be good. Link will be up by end of week.

So, let's hope that's the right answer :)

Joe

[L34h]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

Here's the response from Freescale:

This was mistakenly pulled down, and not affected by the ITC ruling, so
you should be good. Link will be up by end of week.

So, let's hope that's the right answer :)

Joe

YAY! :D See, that's why Joe's in charge. lol

[simap]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

Here's the response from Freescale:

This was mistakenly pulled down, and not affected by the ITC ruling, so
you should be good. Link will be up by end of week.

So, let's hope that's the right answer :)

Joe

Awesome news. I was wondering what BGA type patents had to do with the USBTAP programmer.

Of course, now that I have a proper development environment (just got it today!), the cpu is probably going to change next year ;-)

[FlyBoy2]

Re: State of Next Year's Competition?

Well, team, I purchased a MC56F8006DEMO-T last week.

The Demo-T arrived today.

So I now have a CodeWarrior USB TAP. The board and USB TAP is $99

A really good deal. Now I have to figure out what to do with this.

Hopefully we will be using the same processor next year.