Guide: How to Make WBA12/13/22/23 Programming Cable

[Justin]

Below is the way I made my own WBA12 programming cable. It should work for the WBA 12, 13, 22, 23 with the 20-pin connector. I recommend reading this through completely before trying because I'm not the best writer. I will attach a schematic and a PDF of this write-up formatted better.
Tools:

• Pin Crimp Tool - https://a.co/d/7hrZNKk
• USB to Serial Cable - https://a.co/d/8smhNb0 or a Computer with a Serial Port
• Soldering Iron
• Solder

Parts:

• JAE 20pin Female Connector - https://www.digikey.com/short/4v4n057j
• Female Pins - https://www.digikey.com/short/3bjjr2b8 (at least 7 but I recommend buying extra, they are cheap and are easy to lose or miscrimp)
• MP1584EN 5V Buck Converter - https://a.co/d/dE69XdA
• MAX3232 DB9 Board - https://a.co/d/34hRyDd
• 4.7kΩ Resistor - https://a.co/d/55tWNF5
• 12V Power Supply (and connectors if you choose to instead of hardwiring it) https://a.co/d/2frjyqY
• 26AWG Wire - https://a.co/d/7DvMGZP
• (Optional) Heat Shrink or Electrical Tape

Assembly:

• Cut off twoshort lengths of wire to be your DC+12v conections, these can be very short as they will be getting tied together and extended to the other points later on.
• Strip a small amount of insulation off the end of each wire, when you crimp the pins on you don’t want too much wire sticking out as it will cause it to not go into the connector housing.
• Grab your crimping tool and two female pins and crimp them on the two wires.
• Insert the two crimped ends into the connector housing in positions 1 and 5. These are numbered on the back side. Be careful and double check the number you are putting them in, these do come out after but its more work and you can break stuff.
• Strip the other ends of these two wires and solder them together. If you are using heat shrink tubing make sure to put it on any connections before you no longer have an open end!
• Get another two pieces of the same color wire used in step 1 these can be longer this time, whatever length you cut off here is going to be roughly the length of your whole programming cable when complete.
• Strip and solder these wires to the wires from step 5 and heat shrink or electrical tape the connection.
• One of these wires will be soldered to the terminal on the 5V Buck converter labeled IN+ and the other wire will go to the Positive terminal of your power connector/adapter. Make sure you are connecting to the positive terminal otherwise you will blow your BV
• Get three short lengths of wire for your ground connections, strip and crimp on three female pins, one on each wire.
• Insert these wires in connector positions 2, 7, and 13
• Strip and Solder all three wires together
• Get another two lengths of the same colored wire, one needs to be the same length as the positive wire going to the power source, the other one can be pretty short as its going right to the 5V Buck Converter.
• Strip and solder these two wires to the three wires from step 11 apply heat shrink or electrical tape
• Connect the longer wire to the Negative terminal of the power supply/connector
• Connect the short wire to the terminal labeled IN- terminal of the 5V Buck Converter
• Get one piece of the wire you have used for ground and one piece of a new color wire that are roughly the same length
• Strip and solder these onto the 5V Buck Converter, the color used for ground will go to OUT- and the new color wire will go to the OUT+ terminal.
• The wire on OUT- will go to the GND terminal of the MAX3232 board, and the wire on OUT+ will go on the VCC terminal of the MAX3232 board. You may heat shrink or tape the GND terminal but not the VCC yet
• Measure out two lengths of two new colors of wire to go from the connector to the MAX3232 board.
• Strip and crimp a pin on one end of each of these wires.
• Put one wire in PIN 16 of the connector and strip and solder the other end to the RXD pin of the MAX3232 board and apply heat shrink or electrical tape to this connection
• Put the other wire in PIN 19 of the connector and strip and solder the other end to the TXD in of the MAX3232 board DO NOT HEAT SHRINK OR TAPE YET
• Take your 4.7k resistor and solder one end to the TXD pin of the MAX3232 board and the other end to the VCC pin Tape between the connections

Your cable should be complete! This cable should work on WBA 12/13/22/23 but I have only tested it on a WBA12 transport.

Note when inserting pins into the connection a very faint click should be heard. This means it was properly inserted and locked into place.

There is a bit of a shortcut for this adapter that seems to have worked fine for me too. You can leave out the 5V regulator, the MAX3232, 4.7k resistor, and the USB to Serial completely and just use a 5V USB UART adapter (https://a.co/d/5hGzZuV) connecting the TXD to pin 16, RXD to 19, and GND to GND, DO NOT CONNECT VCC, this worked for me as well but I think RS232 is more universal.
Use:

• If you are using a computer without a serial port, plug in the USB to Serial Adapter
• Plug the MAX3232 board’s DB9 connector into the serial port
• Plug the 20 pin connector into the WBA(12/13/22/23) transport
• Turn dip switches 1, 6, 7, 8 ON (Dip switches are installed upside down with the transport right side up, look for the makings)
• Plug in power to your programming cable
• The two LED’s on the transport should be alternating pretty quickly, this confirms you are in programming mode!
• Load up the software and get your bin files ready, the WBA12 uses the same bin files used for the EPROMs on the WBA13
• Select your COM port in the software and make sure the baud rate is set to 38400kps
  
  • If you don’t know you COM port number, press Win + R and type devmgmt.msc
  • In the screen that comes up you should see a something like this:
  • If it is not expanded click the arrow to the left of the Ports (COM & LPT) to expand it
  • Look for the line that says USB to Serial or USB Serial Port or something along those lines and take note of the COMx number after it, this is your COM port number.
• You can now select your bin file and start the download, or just verify what version is on your transport!

[Sunrise Side]

Awesome! Thank You Justin!!!

[qbert]

Very  cool
I have two questions:
1) Your documentation says connect RXD to pin 16 of the BV plug your schematic shows pin 15.
2) What software is used?
Thanks
Rich

[Justin]

Good catch! OpBell's original post on the old site told the pin numbers but he got one wrong (15/16) so I always forget which is right.

Correct pin is #16

[Beachy]

Thanks Justin I ordered all the parts. What is the software you use to load the bin to the wba12/22?

[Justin]

The software can be found on the NLG Filesystem, it is in the Bill Validators folder.