The power and convenience of on-board programming

Orlando FL - JTAG Technologies, a leading provider of IEEE Std. 1149.x boundary-scan solutions for testing and programming printed circuit boards, now offers a family of programming tools for a large number of Freescale Semiconductor controllers with on-chip flash memory. The programmers all offer the convenience and efficiency of on-board programming, allowing blank controllers to be soldered on the PCBs for configuring later and as often as necessary.

The following Freescale device families are currently supported by the JTAG Technologies on-board programmers: ColdFire® controllers, Power Architecture™ processors, 16-bit MC56F8000 and MC9S12 devices, and 8-bit MC68HC908 and MC9S08 devices. Support for other Freescale devices is under development as the library of supported devices continues to expand.

The programmers are based on JTAG Technologies’ renowned instrumentation and processing software, so users can easily handle more than one type of programmable chip with a single setup. The tools are ideal for bench-top use where frequent reprogramming may be necessary, as well as for demanding high-throughput production applications.

All JTAG Technologies runtime environments are supported, stand-alone and integrated. For example, the programmers for the Freescale devices can be integrated within all of the popular ATE systems such as Agilent and Teradyne in-circuit testers. And, because the programming instrument is a fully-functional boundary-scan controller, it can also be sequenced to perform a complete battery of structural tests on the board.

Depending on the device family, the programmers range in price from $2500 to $3750, plus the cost of the platform which consists of execution control software and the hardware instrument. The programming platform can be shared among all of the device types.