OH51: COMBINING CODE BANKING HEX FILES

Information in this article applies to:

• C51 Version 5.50

QUESTION

I have two code bank Hex files which are both 64k in size. Each one contains the common area. How can I combine them to generate one Hex file with the following memory organization?:

• 000000H -> 007FFFH - Common Area
• 008000H -> 00FFFFH - Code Bank 0
• 010000H -> 017FFFH - Common Area
• 018000H -> 01FFFFH - Code Bank 1

ANSWER

You can achieve this using the HEX2BIN and BIN2HEX utilities available from our web site. If your hex files are called BANK0.HEX and BANK1.HEX then the following is an example of the invokations you would use:

HEX2BIN /L131072 BANK0.HEX LINKED.BIN
HEX2BIN /O65536 /M BANK1.HEX LINKED.BIN
BIN2HEX /4 LINKED.BIN LINKED.HEX

LINKED.HEX is the combined Hex file and LINKED.BIN is an intermediate binary file. Each Hex file is converted to a binary file but with an address offset. For code bank 1 the offset is 65536 which is 10000H. Once the binary file is generated it is converted into a Hex file.

Note that the Hex file generated uses the Intel HEX-386 file format in order to accomodate addresses above FFFFH.

The same process may be employed for projects that use more than two code banks.

Click on the links below to download the utilities:

• HEX2BIN
• BIN2HEX

If you run the utilities without any arguments you will see a full list of all the options available for each.

MORE INFORMATION

• Refer to the OH51 User's Guide.

SEE ALSO

• GENERAL: INTEL HEX FILE FORMAT
• OH51: UTILITY FOR COMBINING INTEL HEX FILES

FORUM THREADS

The following Discussion Forum threads may provide information related to this topic.

• Code banking

Last Reviewed: Sunday, October 29, 2006