they probably touched up the syntax errors etc so that it probably looked authentic
In terms of the manual, if it is section for section similar, it would basically be the job of a translation software which is prevalent these days with even free ones directly on the web. If it is reversed engineered, it would be really quite a feat If the die photos are different in some significant ways, it would then be likely that it is reverse engineered My guess is that st (or someone) would probably remove the housing and compare the die photos, if it turns out the die photos are identical as well. Unlike the GD32 which is clearly a different chip for which GigaDevice is’using its experience in Flash memories by bonding a separate chip, they just bought a licence for the CM3 core from ARM as well as reused the same silicon IPs for almost all peripherals, and mapped them to the same memory location so it will be easier to test… What is amazing is the similtude between the CS32 datasheet and the STM32 datasheet and RM in Chinese from STM: the contents and even formatting is so similar that it is almost impossible that this can be obtined without the source doxuments. There are silicon die manufacturing sites in China, and it may be possible that the government imposes local production to access their local market. Producing a set of masks for a silicon chip is extremely expensive so I suspect that STM is only using a single set for a given family, withe maximum Flash memory size, then tune the chip to the final marketing version by blowing (or not) fuses during production. In the STM32F103, the Flash size can be determined at run time using the F_SIZE register (address 0x1FFFF7E0 on the STM32F103C8T6), maybe this is also the case for this chip? This is the same in STM datasheet that refernces both the STM32F103C8 and STM32F103CB versions, nothing to do with fans The thing is is that ‘idcode’ hardware or software, if it is software or firmware then even that ‘idcode’ glitch would not tell if after all the chip is reverse engineered or simply that the masks (and processes) is pirated It would more likely to be a reverse engineered product if there are some additional features that is hardware basedīut for now it doesn’t seem so other than an ‘unexpected idcode’ while flashing as mentioned in eevblog forum Reverse engineering is quite possible but that effort would likely be huge and would possibly cost lots to do just that. I’d guess it is necessary to flash something above 64k to confirm if after all there is flash sitting thereītw it seem quite possible that these are pirated, but it’d be a little strange as i tend to think the masks and frontend processes are not likely in china but perhaps there are plants in some other countries in which they are pirated They provided that flash bump so as not to disappoint fans It is rather interesting that they provided 128k for the c8 variant, i’d guess as it become an ‘expected feature’ (too large for google translate can’t post the translate link) I noted that the datasheet for cs32f103c8t6 mentioned as either 64k flash or 128k flash I’ve had a quick look at some of my BP’s and I’ve not found one that contained this chip.
Do you mean the internal Serial Bootloader (which is activated by pulling Boot0 high) does not work ?Īlso, some people reported having problems uploading anything via ST-Link because the device ID is different, but perhaps they were using a different kind of programming hardware
That’s enough for me for today, but if you have any tests you’d like me to run to try and characterize this thing a bit more I’m happy to help (as time/energy allows!) With the bootloader installed, a basic blink program will happily upload and run.
It was totally unresponsive to my attempts to upload over serial, but I’ve managed to install the bootloader using another blue pill board running as an st-link. (I’d never actually tried it until today!) I’ve just discovered that a blue pill board I got a couple of months ago is one of these.