We have a fresh cortex that we are trying to load firmware on. When I first plug it in to the computer, it says it is in bootload mode, so it should be able to receive firmware. The master firmware download goes perfectly. However, when it is complete, the USB connection is lost, making us unable to download the ROBOTC firmware. The only way to recover the connection is to unplug the cortex and plug it back in, but when we do that, it goes back into bootload mode, making it impossible to download the ROBOTC firmware. ROBOTC suggests redownloading master firmware, but when we do that the connection is again lost and we are back to square 1.
Has anyone else encountered this issue and if so, is there any solution?
There are a number of things to check and try, some of these I’m sure you know.
Make sure you are using the latest version of RobotC, V3.04.
Have you loaded the new USB driver? IFI changed the USB communications between master firmware 2.xx and 3.xx, however, master firmware is always downloaded using old style communications but when you reboot you will need new style communications to download the RobotC code.
Sometimes the PC/RobotC software does not auto detect the correct port to download to, I have seen this happen often when new master firmware is loaded. Try manually selecting the comms port from the “view” menu, new style USB communications will now show as a “com” port and not USB direct that used to be shown.
Can you see the cortex using the Robot->Vex troubleshooter->software inspection menu? Even without loading the RobotC software you should be able to communicate and see the master firmware version (3.16 is the latest).
We just tried it on a new computer and it appears the problem is that the VEX comm port driver, which should automatically install once master firmware is installed, is not installing. I have no clue why this might be happening…
The driver for the Cortex will automatically install only if you’ve already manually downloaded and installed the driver files. You can find them here: http://www.robotc.net/download/cortex/ under “Download the VEX CORTEX Device Driver”.
I had a similar problem and after ensuring I had the latest drivers (see previous post) the problem cleared up. as the other posts suggest first ensure you have the latest versions of all the drivers.
Another gotcha if you are upgrading drivers to a later version. some drivers are incompatible so always uninstall the previous version of the driver. I failed to do this and had repeated ‘blue screen of death’ on a windows 7 PC when downloading and debugging in Robot C. after uninstalling all drivers (there seemed to be 2 versions listed for the serial port device) a fresh install cleared up the problem.