The EZ430 boards from TI are great little gadgets that can be used to start development. However, the programming board limits the UART baudrate to 9600 baud. This slows down everything since each character takes so long to get sent. Becuase of this I designed and built a few USB to UART adapters in the same form factor as the EZ430 boards. It works great, although it’s very simple and don’t have any programming ability. It uses the FT232 device from FTDI Chip.
The board was designed for milling and manual assembly, so they’re pretty simple and have relatively large holes. Could use a bit of rework but since I have no current need for them, I’ll leave it to you.
A header is used for selecting between 3.6V and 5V on the FT232 I/O voltage. You should select 3.6V for an MSP430.
The EAGLE source files are provided so the board can be modified as needed.
refuse at page 36
PxIES – Interrupt enable register. (should be PxIE)
Thank you. There was a mistake there and it has been corrected. Once a new version is released it’ll be corrected.
Gustavo