About
=====

    Ch341Prog A simple command line tool(programmer) interfacing with ch341a under Linux OS and macOS. 

Description
===========

    There are a lot cheap SPI/IIC programmers based on ch341a, which can be bought from ebay for as low as $3. However, there was no Linux based tools
    associated with the hardware, and the best I can find is a tool called `ch341eepromtool' (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ch341eepromtool/) which can
    only deal with IIC EEPROMs. So I decide to write my own. 
    After reading the source for ch341eeprom and sniffering the usb traffic, I thinks I have fully understood the usb protocol. So, here is what I have got so far. 
    Special thanks to asbokid, the ch341eepromtool’s author.

License
=======

    This is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the latest GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software

    Foundation. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
    FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. 
    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Speed Test
==========

    read a 8M flash(W25Q64) costs 101.840 seconds
    write to an 8M flash(W25Q64) costs 158.811 seconds

Requires
========

	gcc
	GNU make
	libusb-1.0 and the libusb library development files. See http://libusb.wiki.sourceforge.net/
    libusb-1.0-dev  (on debian-based distros)

Compiling
=========

	# make
    $ make install

Linux Permissions
=================

    To ensure the CH341 programmer will be set up with proper permissions on a Linux computer, run the following command to install a udev rule file into 
    etc/udev/rules.d: 
    sudo make install-udev-rul
		
Running
=======

    $ ./ch341prog

    Usage:
     -h, --help             display this message
     -i, --info             read the chip ID info
     -e, --erase            erase the entire chip
     -v, --verbose          print verbose info
     -l, --length <bytes>   manually set length
     -w, --write <filename> write chip with data from filename
     -o, --offset <bytes>   write data starting from specific offset
     -r, --read <filename>  read chip and save data to filename
     -t, --turbo            increase the i2c bus speed (-tt to use much faster speed)
     -d, --double           double the spi bus speed

    Example:  ch341prog -v -w bootrom.bin
