nRF52 DK (pca10040) not seen by nrfjprog after IF update

[Mike W]

After spending half a day on this solution, I found out it wasn't really a solution - it devolved back to the same issue after trying to connect - please advise!

Description of System: nRF52 DK Windows 10 pro PC

Description of Problem: Basically, my DK appears bricked, and none of the established solutions work.

After flashing a couple different softdevices on the nRF52 DK, it was no longer found by the nrfjprog utility, whether in regular or bootloader modes.

At first, powering on in bootloader mode would consistently cause the BOOTLOADER drive to show up then disappear either instantly or after ten seconds or so. Trying to flash or drag/drop any FW during this time (for example the latest recommended nRF5x-OB-JLink-IF) was futile. After installing MBED drivers, it wouldn't show up at all as a drive or a COM/PORT entry in the device manager either.

Taking any of the normal steps either requires nrfjprog CLI to be working (the device shows up as recognized) or the device to show up and function properly with a drag and drop. Restarting the computer did not help. All drivers are up to date, and everything has been uninstalled and reinstalled.

My thoughts are that this is either a driver problem or a serious corruption in the board FW that disallows communication. I have an external J-Link programmer if someone could guide me through reflashing with that via the JTAG micro-header interface.

After manually uninstalling all drivers related to the J-Link then reinstalling from scratch, the drive does now show up, and I was able to then use command prompt to copy the IF onto the BOOTLOADER drive, which subsequently started to show up when not in bootloader mode as JLINK (still as BOOTLOADER when started in that mode). I am still, however, unable to see the device with nrfjprog.

Update: In the interest of trying all available options, I tried setting up and ident with Keil, no luck. Also tried sandeepmistry's arduino library - and it actually can see the device (and reads correct serial number). Turns out it will actually program the thing. So now I am beyond confused, because the last thing I expected to work - the most abstracted one - seems to work fine. Any way I can get it showing up again in nrfjprog so that I can hopefully start using this with Make and eventually Eclipse?

Thanks so much in advance.

[endnode]

Have you tried to install latest (or going backwards some older) SEGGER J-Link SW package and use J-Link Configurator to flash J-Link OB FW on companion Atmel chip?

I faced issues in SEGGER/mBed drivers for J-Link and I sometimes needed to pick mbed composite driver manually (on Win7) to make it work as both J-Link and COM serial port. But in the end always nrfjprog from the latest NRFTOOLs package started to work again...

[Mike W]

Thanks for the suggestion!

By J-Link Configurator, you mean the Wizard in Ozone? I know they refer to it as the Configurator on their site, but there is no such download, so I'm assuming they're just naming their feature and being a bit inconsistent with its labeling. I do see the ATSAM3X2C option in Ozone, so I'll see if I can flash just the companion chip that way with the J-Link.

When you say you needed to pick mbed composite driver manually, what do you mean exactly? Do you mean select the composite (i.e. versus other drivers) from some website? If so, which website and which driver(s)? Or do you mean that you used a tool that installs other drivers (like the J-Link SW & Doc Kit), or something else? I'll try using J-Flash to load the OB FW as you suggested.

Thanks again for the help.