how to determine nRF51822 laser mark

[Sam Wei Quan]

Recently i have bought 4 nRF51822 custom board and unable to program it. The laser mark of the nRF51822 for custom board is N51822 QFAAC0 1308AE

I failed to program with the firmware that function properly on the nRF51822 Dev Kit. Keil uVision shown success program message but nRF51822 custom board did not shown any respond. All register's value is 0xFFFFFFFF when using Keil uVision debug mode. The laser mark of the nRF51822 for nRF51822 Dev Kit is N51822 QFAAC0 1309AF

P/S: nRF51822 custom board's agent did not reply my email. So, i have to try to fix it myself.:(

[Sam Wei Quan]

Problem solved. N51822 QFAAC0 1308AE is old version nRF51822 chip. Select nrf51822_xxaa (256K) at target device for Keil uVision will able to program. nrf51822_xxaa_s110 (256K) is the latest nRF51822 chip.

[Ole Morten]

There is no difference between chips with the markings you've mentioned here, and both the "nrf51822_xxaa" and the "nrf51822_xxaa_s110" targets can be used on this chip. When to use which of these depends on whether or not you have the softdevice programmed or not. If you have the S110 softdevice programmed, it will occupy the lower part of the flash, and the target options in Keil must therefore be slightly different to avoid Keil trying to overwrite it. This is the difference between these two targets.

This means that if you have the softdevice programmed, you have to select the _s110 target while if you don't, you must select the target without the prefix.

[Ole Morten]

This comment doesn't seem to be quite correct. Please take a look at my answer below, and if you find it clear, I'd be very happy if you could mark this question as not resolved, and then instead accept my answer below. This would make things clearer for possible other users referring to this question. Feel free to post a comment on my answer if anything is still unclear.

[Sam Wei Quan]

I have solved this problem with the latest s110 SDK programmed. Now it able to select nrf51822_xxaa_s110 as target chip. When i programmed it with s110 SDK v5.1, there was a weird situation. When i testing with existing examples, some examples unable to select nrf51822_xxaa_s110(256K) as target chip.

[Ole Morten]

This sounds a little strange, but good thing if everything works correctly with the latest softdevice!

As mentioned, I'd be happy if you could mark an answer as accepted, to clearer for later users.