Recovery Procedure

Sometimes the system settings on a Garcia robot can get corrupted. This may occur if the robot receives erroneous commands that alter its system parameters or if the battery power gets too low. The Garcia motherboard has an "EEPROM Lock" jumper connection that controls write protection for the processor EEPROMs. Placing a shorting jumper on the EEPROM Lock pins will enable write protection. This should prevent accidental corruption of system settings.

Note:

On older Beta units, the EEPROM lock has 3 pins. Placing a shorting jumper across the middle and right pins enables write protection. Placing a shorting jumper across the middle and left pins disables write protection.

If write protection is not enabled and the the system settings get corrupted, it may no longer be possible to communicate with the module through the serial link. To regain control of the robot, a user may try the Recover feature in the GarciaTool application.

Locate the 4-wire serial extension cable. It has yellow, red, green, and black wires with a 4-pin female connector on one end and a 4-pin male connector on the other end.

Note:

Be sure to remove the EEPROM lock prior to a Recovery attempt.

Prior to performing the recover procedure, turn the robot off and connect the 4-wire serial extension cable to the "Moto Serial" port near the front right corner of the robot. The black wire must be connected to the Ground pin. It may be helpful to bend the wires over the black housing in order to hook serial extension cable onto the pins. Then you can push the connector onto the pins with one finger.

Connect the serial extension cable to the serial adapter. Then connect the serial adapter to a serial cable connected to your host computer. Run the GarciaTool application and turn on the robot.

Select the Configure window and click the Recover button. The program will start trying different baud rates in an attempt to regain communication with the Moto processor.

The program will update a text box with status messages. If successful, you will see messages indicating that modules have been found and reset. You can also see the two green LEDs performing rapid flashes indicating successful resets.

This recovery procedure will not alter any stored TEA programs or reflexes, but it will wipe out the normal boot-up settings. It is possible that the condition which corrupted the system settings could have also corrupted some TEA programs or reflexes. Perform a Braindump to be sure that the Garcia has the correct files, reflexes, and motion control settings.

If you will not be altering any of Garcia's onboard software, apply the EEPROM lock jumper after performing the Braindump procedure.