Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Anuj Pathak — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 10:37:40 GMT

Thanks, I'll try with 2.6.4.
but if it is not guaranteed to work then it is only one way verification.

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Hung Bui — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 08:17:43 GMT

Hi Anuj,
What exactly you want to test ? If you want to check if the SPI pins selection work or not, why not just test on a newer DK ?

For EngA, I think you should try on v2.6.4

The problem with testing with EngA is that even if you have verify that it works on EngA there is no guarantee that it will 100% works on the production chip. So it's better to do the test with a version as close as possible to the production chip.

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Anuj Pathak — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 04:37:43 GMT

[quote userid="2121" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/122818/unable-to-bringup-nrf54h20-enga-version-custom-board/542118"]You mentioned that you were able to test with I2C, what's the problem of testing SPI130 on that board ? [/quote]

Yes, we have tested I2C bus peripheral using a nRF54H20DK 0.8.0 and exposed I2C bus header on our custom board.

[quote userid="2121" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/122818/unable-to-bringup-nrf54h20-enga-version-custom-board/542118"]I assume you have a fresh board and you want to provision it ?[/quote]

Yes it is fresh board.

[quote userid="2121" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/122818/unable-to-bringup-nrf54h20-enga-version-custom-board/542118"]I am not so sure if the SoC binaries needed for EngA version. As far as I remember I didn't have to do provisioning when I get started with the PDK. [/quote]

We still have few more boards if that is the case, I can try flashing samples directly to the module without provisioning. Just let me know the compatible NCS version for EngA. Can we use 2.8.0 for EngA or is it 2.6.4 that supports EngA.

[quote userid="2121" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/122818/unable-to-bringup-nrf54h20-enga-version-custom-board/542118"]I'm afraid that not much we can do, and moving to newer chip version is the way to go. [/quote]

Yes i agree and we are already in process to procure and use newer variant.
All we need is a working SPI sample that we can use to verify on board SPI peripherals to possibly save a hardware revision cycle (if we found a issue with the same in next version).

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Hung Bui — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:53:11 GMT

Hi Anuj,

You mentioned that you were able to test with I2C, what's the problem of testing SPI130 on that board ?

[quote user="Anuj Pathak"]There is no mention of EngA version so we guessed that 0.6.5 or before are compatible, and we tried all binaries and bicr, but provisioning failed at unable to change boot mode.[/quote]

I assume you have a fresh board and you want to provision it ?

I am not so sure if the SoC binaries needed for EngA version. As far as I remember I didn't have to do provisioning when I get started with the PDK.

I'm afraid that not much we can do, and moving to newer chip version is the way to go.

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Anuj Pathak — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 08:51:08 GMT

Hi

I am completely aware that EngA/B support is dropped in v2.9.0. That link is to refer the compatibility matrix which mentions different NCS version compatibility with the given binary revision.

https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-3.0.1/page/nrf/releases_and_maturity/abi_compatibility.html#abi_compatibility_matrix_for_the_nrf54h20_soc_binaries

2.8.0 row only lists 0.7.0 binaries for EngB and EngC silicon, and there is no mention of EngA anywhere.

Please look again and provide feedback

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Hung Bui — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 08:20:24 GMT

Hi Anuj,

No NCS v3.0.1 won't work with EngA. I mentioned that from 2.9.0 we removed support for EngA. You would need to stick to the older SDK.
Again, it's strongly recommended to switch to the newer version of the chip.

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Anuj Pathak — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 05:35:04 GMT

Hi,

We are not able to provision the board as per https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-3.0.1/page/nrf/releases_and_maturity/abi_compatibility.html

There is no mention of EngA version so we guessed that 0.6.5 or before are compatible, and we tried all binaries and bicr, but provisioning failed at unable to change boot mode. We have even tried generating custom bicr as per our board specification but that too didn't help us proceed with provisioning.

At the moment we are only trying to blink an led at p1.03 or 1.05,1.06
once we verify the firmware is running we'll try simple SPI setup to verify our on board peripherals are able to communicate.

Regards

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Hung Bui — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 14:33:26 GMT

Hi,
Could you tell which issue you have with SPI ?
Which exact SPI did you try ?
As far as I know SPI120/121 doesn't work on EngA, but SPI130 does.

Please try to play with the pins as well (but make sure you follow the recommendation about pins in the datasheet) as some pins may not work (Port 2, Pin 3 and 6 are not working SPIM130)

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Anuj Pathak — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 11:43:16 GMT

As per v2.8.0 doc, SPI is supported, can we use it (or any other version) with EngA revision somehow to verify at least on board SPI peripherals?
We only want to verify on-boards peripheral communication. We can use previous NCS versions just to verify.

RE: Unable to bringup nRF54H20 EngA version custom board

Hung Bui — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 11:09:01 GMT

Hi Anuj,

Supports for EngA (and EngB) has been removed from NCS v2.9.0.
It's not recommended to continue your development with EngA. And unfortunately we don't have any workaround or unstable release that you can use to test SPI, EXMIF, and PDM.

For that purpose I would suggest to get latest nRF54H20 DK.