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Upgrading your iron

Miniware irons (TS100, TS80, TS80P)

This is completely safe, but if it goes wrong just put the .hex file from the official website onto the unit and you're back to the old firmware. Downloads for the hex files to flash are available on the releases page. The file you want is called (MODEL)_EN.hex unless you want the translations, they are (MODEL)_language short name.hex. Where (MODEL) is either TS100 or TS80.

Officially the bootloader on the iron only works under Windows (use the built-in File Explorer, as alternative file managers or copy handlers like Teracopy will fail). However, users have reported that it does work under Mac, and can be made to work under Linux sometimes. Details over on the wiki page.

  1. Hold the button closest to the tip, and plug in the USB to the computer.
  2. The unit will appear as a USB drive.
  3. Drag the .hex file onto the USB drive.
  4. The unit will disconnect and reconnect.
  5. The filename will have changed to end in .RDY or .ERR
  6. If it ends with .RDY you're done! Otherwise, something went wrong.
  7. If it didn't work the first time, try copying the file again without disconnecting the iron, often it will work on the second shot.
  8. Disconnect the USB and power up the iron. You're good to go.

For the more adventurous out there, you can also load this firmware onto the device using an SWD programmer.

On the bottom of the MCU riser PCB, there are 4 pads for programming. On v2.51A PCB revision USB_D+ is shorted to SWDIO and USB_D- is shorted to SWCLK so debugging works without disassembly (attach while staying in the bootloader). Installing dapboot from eDesignOSS (make TARGET=TS100 -C src) is recommended as it allows reliable flashing of binary files with dfu-util.

There is a complete device flash backup included in this repository. (Note this includes the bootloader, so will need an SWD programmer to load onto the unit).

For the TS80 the SWD pins are used for the QC negotiation, so you can actually connect to the SWD power via the USB connector.

FAQ

The file is showing up with the extension .ERR

This can occur duing the programming process if any of the checks in the bootloader fail. This is often triggered by anti-virus software or using a non-windows host OS.

First, try just copying the file a second time.

  1. Attach the iron in DFU mode
  2. Copy the hex file to the device
  3. The device disconnects and connects with the .ERR file
  4. Copy the same hex file again DO NOT TRY AND DELETE THE OLD ONE
  5. The device will disconnect and reconnect again
  6. The device should now have the .RDY file
  7. Your done.

If this fails, if you are on Mac or Linux reading the wiki page about programming can help. There is also a very long issue thread going through all of the different attempts around this too.

If you are on windows, its often to try another computer (friends, work, partners etc).

Device randomly disconnects or does not show up in DFU mode

First, check the USB cable your using has the data pins; test it on another device. There are a surprisingly large number of usb-micro cables that are power only.

Secondly, try other USB ports. Often different USB controllers will interact with the units differently due to design quirks in the miniware design.

Setting a custom bootup image

This firmware uses a different method of updating the bootup image. This removes the need for emulating a USB drive on the iron just to allow for a bootup image to be setup. There are further instructions on the wiki. Instructions are kept on the wiki so that users can update the information if they find extra helpful information.

Alternative bootloader

If you are an advanced user, and you have used usb-dfu tools before, or you would like to learn; there is an alternative bootloader for these irons. This will NOT show up as a USB storage drive, but instead show up using a standard DFU protocol device. You can then use dfu tools or GUI's to upgrade the iron using the .bin files that are posted to the releases page.

To change to dapboot based alternative bootloader, you need to flash the hex file from here. ts100-stockbl.hex will reflash the stock bootloader, ts100-dapboot.hex will flash the new dapboot based usb bootloader.

Note that this is only reccomended for users who know what they doing. If you dont not understand how this works; please dont flash this.