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ISP-55e0 - An ISP flashing tool for the WCH CH55x, CH57x and CH32Fx

This tool is meant to flash the WinChipHead CH55x / CH57x / CH32Fx series, such as the CH551, CH552, CH554, CH559 or CH579, through USB or serial port on Linux.

When set in ISP mode, the chip creates a 4348:55e0 USB device, hence the name for that project.

A few similar tools exist for the CH55x series, but all appear unmaintained and / or are without a proper license:

So the wheel has to be re-invented.

See also wchisp (https://github.com/ch32-rs/wchisp) which is a new supported tool, written in rust, and with a license.

isp55e0 has been tested on:

Chip Bootloader USB Serial
CH549 2.4.0 +
CH551 2.3.1 +
CH552 2.3.1 +
CH552 2.4.0 +
CH554 2.4.0 +
CH559 2.4.0 +
CH573 2.8.0 +
CH579 2.8.0 +
CH582 2.4.0 + +
CH583 2.4.0 +
CH32F103C8T6 2.3.1 +
CH32F103C8T6 2.5.0 +
CH32V103C8T6 2.6.0 +
CH32V203C8T6 2.7.0 +
CH32V203G8R6 2.6.0 +
CH32V307VCT6 2.9.0 +
CH32X035F8U6 2.6.0 +

Build

It needs the libusb development package. On Debian / Ubuntu, install the "libusb-1.0-0-dev" package. In rpm world, it is usually called "libusb1-devel".

Type:

make

macOS

  1. install libusb

    brew install libusb

  2. build

    clang -O2 -Wall -Werror -I /opt/homebrew/include -L /opt/homebrew/lib -lusb-1.0 -o isp55e0 isp55e0.c

UDEV configuration

By default, a linux system will only allow the root user to program these chips. If you'd like to program these chips as a regular user, a udev rule must be added. As root, issue the following command:

cp 99-wch-isp.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/99-wch-isp.rules

Edit this file as desired.

Usage

Help:

  ./isp55e0 --help

  ISP programmer for some WinChipHead MCUs
  Options:
    --port, -p          use serial port instead of usb
    --code-flash, -f    firmware to flash
    --code-verify, -c   verify existing firwmare
    --data-flash, -k    data to flash
    --data-verify, -l   verify existing data
    --data-dump, -m     dump the data flash to a file
    --debug, -d         turn debug traces on
    --help, -h          this help

Query the device:

./isp55e0

Flash some firmware, which will also read back to verify it:

./isp55e0 -f fw.bin

Verify an existing firmware against a flashed firmware:

./isp55e0 -c fw.bin

Note that if the verification fails, all subsequent verifications will fail. The chip has to be power cycled to fix the issue.

On flashing iHex files

iHex is not supported, but objcopy can be used to convert an iHex file to a regular raw file:

objcopy -I ihex -O binary xxx.hex xxx.bin

Note on the CH32F103C8T6 BluePill clone

The CH32F103 chip has 2 USB ports. Some breakout boards have 1 USB port, while some have both. The USB port used by the bootloader is connected to PB6 (D-) and PB7 (D+), while the regular port is connected to PA11 (D-) and PA12 (D+). When only one port is present, some soldering will be needed to access the port. When the 2 ports are present, the bottom port is used by the bootloader and the top port is the regular one, compatible with the STM32F103 chip.

Note on the firmware encryption

A drawback of these devices is that the firmware has to be sent encrypted to the device. The host creates the key, which is sent garbled and hidden amongst garbage bytes to the bootloader. The bootloader extracts the key from predetermined offsets in the packet and will use it later to decrypt the data before flashing or comparing. As it's a simple fixed size xor key, it's rather easy to figure it out, but this is just plain stupid. Since the last byte of the key is the sum of the first byte plus the chip type, it is not possible to create a fake key full of zeroes.

There are plenty of other manufacturers who don't do that stupid shit.

For some reason, the data flash is different. Writing to it has to be encrypted, but reading from it is in clear.

Caveats

Setting options is not implemented. The program will make no attempt to recover from an error and will just exit.