Does SEGGER JLink version affect BLE programming?

[Ladasky]

Yesterday, I asked a question (so far, no one has answered) about how an OS upgrade on my desktop computer might have broken my ability to flash and run BLE apps on the nRF52 Preview DK, PCA10036.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

I had questions about the version of SEGGER JLink I was using before (which I did not write down) versus the SEGGER JLink I currently have installed (version 6.0.6). Today I came across this post:

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

...which implies that Nordic included SEGGER 5.10 in a Win32 command-line support package intended for PCA10036 development. I work in Linux, but I am still noting the difference in versions.

I know that JLink is not Nordic's software, but are there known differences between the various JLink versions? If there are problems, should this information be added to the Compatibility Matrix page (infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp

Thanks for any advice.

[RK]

No it doesn't matter at all as long as your JLink version is recent enough to support the chip you're using (eg very old JLinks didn't support the nRF52), so anything newer is fine, modulus the occasional bug which gets added. So 6.0 is fine and nothing needs to go into any compatability matrix.

Adding one note that if you're using something compiled against the JLink SDK there can be issues however again for the most part even that is very forward compatible.

Try JLink from the command line to figure out whether it's the python tools which don't work or if your basic JLink package doesn't work.

[RK]

ok I had to look that version up - it's so old I don't even have support for it in my OSX tool, but yes indeed that was 0x1F000, then it dropped to 0x1C000 and now with v3 it's back to 0x1F000 again.

I don't remember what the compatibility was, possibly if you only have the original PCA10036 boards you are limited to very early versions of the softdevice. You might want to raid the piggy bank and get a more recent dev kit, eg the PCA10040 which gives you access to the production softdevices and all the great stuff added in S132V2 and even more in V3, which I haven't even moved to yet.