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Debugging tool for MSP430 MCUs

MSPDebug

MSPDebug is a free debugger for use with MSP430 MCUs. It supports FET430UIF, eZ430, RF2500 and Olimex MSP430-JTAG-TINY programmers, as well as many other compatible devices. It can be used as a proxy for gdb or as an independent debugger with support for programming, disassembly and reverse engineering.

Features

  • Userspace only: no kernel modifications required.
  • Works with RF2500, eZ430, FET430UIF (V2 and V3), Launchpad, Chronos, GoodFET, Olimex MSP430-JTAG-TINY and MSP430-JTAG-ISO programmers. Also supports the TI flash bootloader.
  • Can act as a GDB remote stub (replacement for msp430-gdbproxy) and/or a GDB client.
  • Can single-step, program, run to breakpoint and inspect memory on supported devices.
  • Can be used to access the FET430UIF bootloader.
  • Supports Intel HEX, ELF32, BSD symbol table, COFF, TI Text and SREC file formats.
  • Can disassemble code in memory, including translating addresses to symbols.
  • Includes reverse-engineering features such as instruction search, call-graph analysis and symbol table editing.
  • Simulation mode allows execution of MSP430 code without hardware.
  • Cross-platform: compiles on Linux, *BSD, OS/X and Windows.

Compiling from source

Ensure that you have the necessary packages to compile programs that use libusb (on Debian or Ubuntu systems, you might need to do apt-get install libusb-dev | on Arch systems, you might need to do sudo pacman -S libusb-compact). After that, unpack and compile the source code with:

tar xvfz mspdebug-version.tar.gz
cd mspdebug-version
make

On Debian Ubuntu systems sudo apt-get install libreadline-dev may be required. On Arch systems sudo pacman -S readline may be required. If you don't want GNU readline support, you can invoke make with:

make WITHOUT_READLINE=1

After compiling, install the binary and manual page by running (as root):

make install

Type "mspdebug --help" for usage instructions.