ARM GCC compiles but bin file is very small and download but does not work

Question

I am using the sdk version 11 and arm-none-eabi-gcc version 5.4 on linux mint to compile the blinky test application. I have pointed the Makefile-posix at the location of the compiler gone into the folder for the pca10028 board and into the s130 folder. When i run make everything appears to compile and link with no errors and a bin and a hex file is produced. However the hex file produced is much smaller than the example hex file in the hex folder(which works fine). When i download this hex file it does not do anything at all. The elf file produced is around 340k while the bin file is about 1k and hex is about 3k. I have used keil to compile and got a working hex file but I need to get GCC working. I have not modified the make file so any ideas what might cause this kind of symptom. I have tried using a slightly old version 4.9 of the arm gcc as well but same results

Richard L · Accepted Answer

ok I just figured it , my mistake was to use jlinks drag and drop flashing . I used the jlink command line to load the bin file to the correct location 0x1b000 and now it works. I guess that jlink drag and drop just overwrites everything and so perhaps the example hex files are so large because the include the soft device within them