Cerebot 32mx4 not working with MPLAB X

[bretto311]

I realize this board is no longer supported, but I built a robot years back in school using this board and would like to get it up and running again. The program was written using MPLAB whatever version was the latest back when we built it and so I downloaded the latest MPLAB X but am unable to get it to recognize the Cerebot 32mx4 board when I plug it in. In the device manager it shows up as a "microchip tool" but the IDE doesn't recognize it and even crashes when i plug it in sometimes. I figure its the driver so I did some searching as was able to find that this board using the PIC32MX Starter Kit driver, which I was able to find an old version of the driver with an old mplab 8.xx cd i had. However my windows 10 64 bit laptop can't install that driver it says its 32 bit and won't work with this computer or something. Anyway I have look all around for a more up to date driver and have been unsuccessful. I have also submitted a support ticket with Microchip but have not heard anything in over a week. Has anyone had any success getting the Cerebot 32mx4 to work with MPLAB X?

 

[JColvin]

Hi @bretto311,

I unfortunately don't have much advice to offer as indeed the board is no longer supported. Though perhaps against my better judgement as I never really used MPLAB X, I did the latest MPLAB X (6.10) and XC 32 compiler (4.30) from Microchip and successfully installed them on my Windows 10 laptop, but the on-board debugger did not appear as an option within MPLAB X for the lone Cerebot MX7cK that I was able to find in the office, nor did I see the chipKIT Debugger or PICKit 3 as supported options, leading me to suspect that the licensed debugger options are in some older version of MPLAB X.

Not certain as for your 32 bit troubles; Windows 10 machines, or at least mine, do not outright reject 32-bit applications, though my understanding is that is not always the case (at least for Windows 11).

I was able to see and configure the board through the Arduino IDE (I have 1.8.13 but don't intend to test anything else) with the Digilent Core (https://digilent.com/reference/learn/software/tutorials/digilent-core-install/start), but of course this is not using MPLAB X.

I hope you can find a version that is working for you.

Thanks,
JColvin