I’m using Win10x64 and have 3 XIAOS and 3 WIO Lite MG126s that are completely useless to me.
Yes I put these in the drawer in the fall because every SAMD21 based board I had eventually became completely unprogrammable. I want to like them but I hate them. I dug them out to see if there are any updates and I’m still wondering if I should toss them.
What’s the actual deal with accessing the XIAO in DFU mode or whatever it is so you can see the drive letter that everyone takes for granted? When I double tap the reset all I get is an incremented com port.
I’ve done all kinds of things including enabling test mode and disabling driver signing, I use a usbview utility to delete the drivers by vid/pid and then restart and then MAYBE i can program to the damn thing once.
So… I want to try circuitpython for the XIAO and none of these things create a drive letter.
I started with using the Arduino IDE then I learned Atmel Studio then I went to PlatformIO just trying to find any GDMF thing that could talk to these MF things.
Micropython started looking mighty tempting but I can’t ever see the drive letter. That’s when I found out that I probably needed to use a hardware programmer… which is an entirely different area of specialization with all kinds of options and choices and rabbit holes to trip on and get kicked around by forum members making assumptions about how far I’m willing to go to learn this skill.
I didn’t want to spring for the ST link because that would just be throwing money away so I got a Black Magic Probe and tried to compile and use OpenOCD along with the UART pins and GDB with the Probe and JFC does the BS ever end? There isn’t a straight up humane way to do any of this is there. The “how to use openocd and a debugger tutorials” also take way too much for granted and the documentation is ambiguous to someone not already initiated.
Also. search engines suck.
Don’t let my tone seem like I’m frustrated at you… dear fellow seeed enthusiast! This isn’t personal to you or to Seeed and I’m not looking for a scapegoat for my shortcomings. It’s just like every GDMF thing I try to do on a SAMD21 board turns into a MF study in anger management.
So if buy more XIAO’s and Wio’s how do I prevent this nightmare from recurring?