On a microcontroller board that I am working on, there is a buffer chip between the microcontroller TI msp430 F1611
and USB interface FTDI FT232BL
. The chip is named NC7WZ126.
My question is, why they have used that buffer? what benefits it has and what would happen if that chip was not there at all?
I am asking this because I want to wire up directly to TX/RX pins of the msp430 for some debugging purpose. So should I directly wire to the msp430 pins (Pins #34 and #35)? Or I should wire to the inputs of the buffer (pin 2 and 3 of NC7WZ126)
UPDATE
AFAIK msp430 is using 0-3.3V for low-high (Since its get its Vcc after a 3.3 regulator) bits and that FTDI is 5 Volts (powered by USB) so can be that a reason for that buffer? Considering That I want to feed in 5V CMOS to RX/TX of msp 430, then I should wire to the buffer and not to the 430?