How to restore nRFgo motherboard firmware

[Håkon Alseth]

This is an howto on restoring your nRFgo motherboard firmware.

Error code can be similar to this from nRFgo Studio:

Starting bootloader on board 0
Could not start the bootloader on the nRF6310
Please toggle power of board 0 to reset it

You could try to manually activate the bootloader feature of the Atmel on the motherboard. Here's the procedure:

1. Power-on the board, make sure the USB is connected to a PC.

2. Short P18 (between the extension board connectors).

3. Reset the AVR by shorting pin 5 and 6 on P14 (close to the crystal).

4. Remove both shorts. A USB device should enumerate now under name "Atmel DFU bootloader"

5. Open cmd.exe and cd "c:\your\path\to\nrfgo studio" (default: C:\Program Files (x86)\Nordic Semiconductor\nRFgo Studio) and run this command: dfu-programmer at90usb1287 flash hex\nRFgoFirmware_6701.hex

Now you should get "Validating...11212 bytes used (9.12%)"

Power cycle the motherboard and open nRFgo Studio and now it should work.

Note: If your board enumerates as "AT90USB127", then you'll have to manually upgrade the USB driver before running step 5. Point to the driver located in this folder: \Path\to\Nordic Semiconductor\nRFgo Studio\usb_drivers

[nargetdev]

July 17th Edit:

I've tried the method above on multiple computers now. On my bootcamp PC the usb enumerates as AT90USB128 after removing the shorts. How do I "manually upgrade the USB driver before running step 5"? How do I "Point to the driver located in this folder: \Path\to\Nordic Semiconductor\nRFgo Studio\usb_drivers"??

My instinct would say to go to "Device Manager" select the usb device and go to "Update Driver" and select the "usb_drivers" folder but this simply yields: "The driver software is up to date".

When I attempt to do the same procedure on a computer which is natively PC the USB enumerates as "Atmel DFU" but has a little yellow triangle with an exclamation mark.

On both the native PC and on my Bootcamp PC the result of the command: dfu-programmer at90usb1287 flash hex\nRFgoFirmware_6701.hex is... dfu-programmer: no device present

What is the AVR FLIP method? Is there any other method to get moving with my project?? (I'm starting to get pressure coming down on me from above) This is disappointing..

If anybody has any advice or has managed to get anything working I would really really appreciate information.

EDIT: I have managed to upgrade the firmware using the FLIP method following the instructions on this page: www.nordicsemi.com/.../The-firmware-upgrade-failed-on-my-nRGgo-Motherboard.-How-can-I-restore-it

It did take me a couple of tries and the flip program itself was somewhat confusing. If you find yourself in the same predicament I was in do not hesitate to message me and I will do my best to get you rolling.

[Sean]

I have tried everything. I tried the restoring the firmware using the post by Håkon Alseth, but that resulted in the following error: dfu-programmer: no device present. I then tried using FLIP, but everytime I try to establish a communication link I get the following error: AtLibUsbDfu.dll not found. I can confirm that it is present, because when I go to Help->About Flip it produces a list and AtLibUsbDfu.dll is on that list. I then tried uninstalling nRFgo Studio 1.17.0 and down grading to 1.16.0 and using the procedure outlined by Håkon Alseth, but once again it gave me the error: dfu-programmer: no device found. I got no more options. And in case you're all wondering, I tried the above methods in several different ways, in several different orders, just to make sure, and nothing works. There has to be a way to solve this. This is costing me time and money.