Programmer Tool on nRF Connect For Desktop - Can't write without erasing

[jsantosrico]

Hi,

I was playing around with the Programmer tool, which could be handy for our colleagues less experienced with electronics so they can also flash our board.

I noticed that it's impossible, at least on my setup, to just "write" a binary (the button is greyed out and a tooltip says "Write operation is not supported for J-Link devices, use erase and write". Erase and Write clears all the flash, not just the areas included in the file to be flashed. The problem with that is that it erases the NVM and we have some data stored on it.

Is there a way to overcome this? I find it quite surprising that the tool can't do that. Is there any other GUI tools that I can use?

My setup is a custom board with a PAN1780 module (using an nRF52840 SoC) being programmed with a nRF52840-DK using the external debug port.

[Simonr]

Hi

The Write operation is only meant to be used for the bootloader I believe, and not for J-Link, so I think this is correct, as the operation called before flashing files to an nRF device is a recover in order to make sure write protection is disabled. I'm afraid the Programmer app can't just write with the J-Link, but you could use the nRF Command Line Tools directly.

Best regards,

Simon

[jsantosrico]

Ok, fair enough. If it's something that could be added somehow to a future update, and there's a process for these requests, please, tell me how to do it. I mean, I'm new to Nordic and I don't know enough about the toolchain, but I can't see how "erasing only the sectors about to be written", which is something that can be commonly done with other Cortex-based chips with a JLink and you have a CLI tool to do, couldn't be done with a GUI.