Isn't it possible to debug the cortex-M of the other vendors by using PCA10028 J-Link OB?

RE: Isn't it possible to debug the cortex-M of the other vendors by using PCA10028 J-Link OB?

J.Kwon — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 16:36:32 GMT

Thank you. It's very helpful.

RE: Isn't it possible to debug the cortex-M of the other vendors by using PCA10028 J-Link OB?

RK — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 01:04:56 GMT

Indeed it's non commercial however it's not as the name suggests just for students but for anything non commercial so it's quite wide ranging. I don't actually know whether the OB can be used for commercial development, I guess it can or it wouldn't be of use on a commercial bird.

RE: Isn't it possible to debug the cortex-M of the other vendors by using PCA10028 J-Link OB?

endnode — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:26:23 GMT

True. I thought EDU has also some limited license (e.g. not suitable for commercial development) but if not then it's definitely worth $60!

RE: Isn't it possible to debug the cortex-M of the other vendors by using PCA10028 J-Link OB?

RK — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:15:18 GMT

To be fair to Segger, it's always been against the license agreement to use the OB on any board to program anything apart from the same type of chip. The Segger EDU is about $60 and I bought one some years ago and it's great to have a proper unit to do the job so I consider that $60 well spent.

RE: Isn't it possible to debug the cortex-M of the other vendors by using PCA10028 J-Link OB?

endnode — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 17:51:47 GMT

It is. Just be aware that SEGGER started to detect J-Link OB from nRF5x DK boards in their latest SW packages (sometime in Feb/Mar 2017) and they will complain that J-Link you are using was purchased only to debug Nordic targets so it won't be usable with other ARM Cortex-M chips from other vendors. Luckily this is just "stupid" DRM (although I kind of understand SEGGER - it's hard to promote own products if you can buy J-Link OB for ~$40 with great nRF5x DK) in the SW, board and FW itself seems not be affected and if you use any older release of SEGGER J-Link SW package (or any other compatible SW like OpenOCD) it should work fine. To be 100% safe just don't upgrade J-Link OB FW unless you know that particular version of SEGGER SW you are running doesn't implement this new "target check".

Otherwise I'm flashing NXP LPC chips with PCA10028 and PCA10040 without any problems.