mesa 7i73 4x8 keypad problems on KEY8 input

How do I update the firmware on the 7i73? Through which port?

What version do you have?
 

I really don't know. I bought my card about 3 years ago and I was just curious to know how to update the firmware directly, because as far as I understood, it doesn't work the way other MESA cards load firmware.

Mesa Sserial cards can have their firmware upgraded over their
normal serial connections (in most cases) It's done with
the LinuxCNC utility setsserial.

I understand, but the file you posted is .HEX and not BIT, so to use it, as I understand it, you must use a PIC programmer. My question is: how is this procedure done?

A friend an I now spend several hours on finding an old PicKit3 programmer and getting it to run under Win11 using programmer version 8.92.
Unfortunately the 7i73 still does not work.
After flashing the hex file from 7i73r16.zip, the leds are dark and nothing happens. Luckily my friend read out the original hex file before we wrote the new one. We could recover it by flashing the original read hex back on it.
Are you sure the file in the Zip contains all necessary parts? The original file included data from Address 0x0000 and the hex in the zip starts at 0x1000 when checked in the programmer.
This starts being some pita - please help!
best regards,
Alex

peter@peter-HP-EliteDesk-800-G1-USDT:~/Downloads$ md5sum 7I73S16H1.HEX
0b52431c4f7865ad1e122a7d0b2caf17  7I73S16H1.HEX

Is what I programmed my test 7I73 with and it works:

Erased DSPIC, reprogrammed with 7I73S16H1.HEX (md5 sum: 0b52431c4f7865ad1e122a7d0b2caf17)


 

My friend just wrote me that by merging the start of original & rest of the new hex file he could make it run and linuxcnc says fw16 but the buttons are still not working.
Maybe as you mentioned it has something to do with the bootloader it is not a good idea to copy the old bootloader? I really don't know how to fix this now...
Are you sure this file contains a bootloader or whatever is on address 0x0000 - 0x0FFF? Maybe it works for you because you don't erase and only overwrite the area from 0x1000 - ....?
I also feel like PicKit 3 maybe is too old and not doing same procedure as a newer one?

I Started with an erased 7I73 and it works properly

Its known that the R14 base part will not work properly
with the R16 user part (keyboard does not work).

If I load the full R16 firmware image (with the checksum above)
with my programmer,  the memory image starts at 0.

Maybe some image incompatibility or hex file option difference
with your programmer is causing the offset.

I have included three most recent full images, I suspect none will work without
some change in your programmer.

Note that I am using a older programmer as well but not a PICKit
(a melabs U2) I do have a PICKit 4 I could try

 

Maybe I've found the problem. Looks like the hex file is malformed.
The ":00000001FF" is the EOF - end of file - marker. After EOF it looks like there is more data and another EOF marker.
Looks like there is the missing data!
I can copy the parts after the end to the beginning of the file and try again... unfortunately will take some days of uncertainty before I can try.
Your programming tool could just ignore the EOF marker and also read the extra data.

This is the very end of the 7I73S16H1.HEX intel hex file:
:10A8C800320000000000000000000000000000004E
:10A8D8000000000000800000102700001E0000009B
:10A8E8000080000064000000785600003412000068
:08A8F80000000000AA55000059
:00000001FF
:0200000401F009
:100000000F000000FF000000070000008300000058
:10001000C50000004000000007000000C300000011
:00000001FF