An open source program for controlling XGecu's series of chip programmers.

This program exists because XGecu does not provide a program for use on Linux or other flavors of Unix. We who keep this project going prefer a simple, free, and open-source program that presents a command-line interface that allows for a GUI front-end if desired.

• Native support for Linux, BSD, macOS, and other flavors of Unix.
• Compatibility with TL866CS, TL866A, TL866II+, T48, and T56 from XGecu (http://www.xgecu.com/en/)
• More than 13000 target devices (including AVRs, PICs, various BIOSes and EEPROMs)
• ZIF40 socket and ISP support
• Vendor-specific MCU configuration bits
• Chip ID verification
• Logic IC testing
• Bitbang support
• Overcurrent protection
• System testing

$ minipro -p ATMEGA48 -w atmega48.bin
$ minipro -p ATMEGA48 -r atmega48.bin

You'll need some sort of Linux or MacOS machine. Other Unices may work, though that is untested. You will need version 1.0.16 or greater of libusb. Earlier versions may work, but are untested.

sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config git libusb-1.0-0-dev zlib1g-dev

sudo yum install gcc make pkgconfig git libusbx-devel

sudo zypper install gcc make git-core srecord rpmdevtools libusb-1_0-devel

sudo dnf install make pkg-config git gcc libusb1-devel zlib-ng-compat-devel

git clone https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/minipro.git
cd minipro
make
sudo make install

If you have a T56, you'll need to download and install algorithms from Xgeku's official software package.

sudo make install-algorithm

If you want to access the programmer as a regular user, you'll have to configure udev to recognize the programmer and set appropriate access permissions.

sudo cp udev/*.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm trigger

You'll also have to add your regular user to the plugdev system group:

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev YOUR-USER

Note that this change will only become effective after your next login.

Bash users may want to optionally install the provided completion file:

sudo cp bash_completion.d/minipro /etc/bash_completion.d/

Building a Debian package directly from this repository is easy. Make sure you have the build dependencies installed as described above. Be sure it all builds, then do this:

sudo apt-get install fakeroot debhelper dpkg-dev
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage -b -us -uc

You should then have a .deb package for you to install with dpkg -i. Note that the .deb package will already provide the udev and bash-completion configurations for you.

The following commands require git-buildpackage:

git archive --format=tar HEAD | tar x && git commit -am "packaging: Makefile substitution"
gbp dch --commit --since=HEAD --upstream-branch=master --dch-opt="-lppa" --dch-opt="-D$(lsb_release -c -s)" debian
gbp buildpackage --git-upstream-tree=SLOPPY --git-export-dir=../build-area -S

You can then dput the *.changes file in ../build-area to your PPA.

You can build RPM packages for Fedora, CentOS and openSUSE with the supplied rpm/minipro-*.spec files.

First make sure you have a RPM build environment set up. You need to have the rpmdevtools package installed and a rpmbuild directory tree within your homedir. Use the rpmdev-setuptree command to create the rpmbuild directory tree if it does not exist yet.

Then use these commands to download the source tarballs from Gitlab and build the package for Fedora and CentOS:

spectool -g -R rpm/minipro-fedora.spec
rpmbuild -ba rpm/minipro-fedora.spec

Or for openSUSE:

rpmdev-spectool -f -g -R rpm/minipro-opensuse.spec
rpmbuild -ba rpm/minipro-opensuse.spec

The final RPMs can be found below ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/

guix install minipro

If you want to access the programmer without root privileges you must install the necessary udev rules. This can be done by extending udev-service-type in your operating-system configuration with this package.

(udev-rules-service 'minipro minipro #:groups '("plugdev")

Additionally your user must be member of the plugdev group. At that point, minipro should be installed and ready to use.

The easiest way to install on macOS is by using homebrew to install the most recent release:

brew install minipro

At that point, minipro should be installed and ready to use.

If you'd rather compile from source (if, for instance, you need newer code than is in the most recent release), you'll need to do the following to prepare your environment and compile the code.

Install pkg-config and libusb using brew or MacPorts:

brew install pkg-config
brew install libusb
brew link libusb

or:

port install pkgconfig
port install libusb

git clone [email protected]:DavidGriffith/minipro.git
cd minipro
make
sudo make install

Unlike the other programmers from Xgecu, the T56 does not store its FPGA bitstreams in the hardware. Instead it must be loaded by the controlling software. Those bitstreams (Xgecu calls them algorithms) are found in the official Xgecu software releases. They cannot be included here for copyright reasons. Instead the build process can download them for you and convert them into a single file for use by minipro.

make algorithm
sudo make install-algorithm

When you download an archive/tarball from Gitlab, there is no guarantee that the file given to you will hash to the same value time and time again. For Gitlab to allow for this would require it to store a very large amount of data. If you run a packaging system that depends on hashes like that, consider following the example of the FreeBSD ports system. What they do is use the SHA-1 commit hash of the version to be installed. Check out how FreeBSD does it for Minipro here: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports/tree/main/sysutils/minipro

Code and data for testing ICs have been borrowed from https://github.com/Johnlon/integrated-circuit-tester and https://github.com/akshaybaweja/Smart-IC-Tester and used in accordance with the MIT License (https://opensource.org/license/MIT)