(I understand my question is similar to devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../, but I would like some additional clarification not provided in that post.)
Hello, I've been developing a BLE application for the nrf51822 xxAC with the s110 soft device v 8.0.0 and just recently our custom board came in. I am using the p19 debug header on my nrf51 dev kit board in order to program it. So far I have been able to successfully detect the custom board and nrf51822 xxAC with nRFgo studio, but have had issues when it came time to load the soft device.
Attempting to do it with nRFgo studio resulted in a "jlinkARM dll not found" error which is unusual because I can load the softdevice just fine to the dev board. This issue seems even more strange after looking into that particular error and seeing that it is generally related to windows installation issues of nRFgo studio. Why would it be working fine with the dev board but not the custom board? Is there some interaction here related to custom boards and nRFgo studio that I'm not aware of?
I next tried loading the softdevice hex using nrfjprog. It first threw a JLinkARM.dll not found error similar to nRFgo studio. I tried loading it again and this time it was seemingly successful and resulted in no errors. However, my nrf51822 was now effectively bricked and all attempts to recover it such as: nRFgo studio recover, nrfjprog --recover, and writing the commands to erase all flash using j-link commander, have been unsuccessful. The board can no longer be detected. Both nRFgo and the jlink cmd line tools are up to date and currently work fine when programming the dev board, but not the custom board. This brings me to my main question:
How should I be loading the softdevice onto my custom board?
I've seen a similar post on the devzone which suggest that the softdevice needs to be converted to a .bin file first before being loaded, but I've also seen people loading it with other methods like nRFgo or nrfjprog. All of these seem like valid methods, but two of the three have so far have not worked with one failing catastrophically. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
