S110 SoftDevice version 6.0.0 fails to load on real hardware.

[John Dontknow]

Hi everyone,

I have an interesting problem loading the S110 SoftDevice. First, loading version 6.0.0 onto the Evaluation Kit using nRFgo Studio works fine. However, loading version 7.0.0 on the Evaluation Kit seems to work at first, but the verification ("Verify" button) indicates a failure with "Code length of region 0 is different between GUI and device".

Now the interesting part. Loading version 6.0.0 on the real hardware (JTAG SW) fails with the same error message. And loading version 7.0.0 works!!! :-o Although I can't test it because I'm not using that version of the SDK. Also interesting here is that Region 1 has a size of 176kB - which matches the size that I see when loading the SoftDevice on the Evaluation Kit. I'm able to load firmware onto the real hardware and step through it, so I'm fairly certain that JTAG to the nRF51822 is working.

Any ideas?

Thanks, John

[John Dontknow]

This is solved. Problem was that I was trying to use the "Program Application" tab in nRFgo Studio to load the SoftDevice. For some reason this works sometimes, other times not. ;-|

[Ulrich Myhre]

I think nRFgo Studio looks for UICR data in the hex file to determine if it is an app or a SoftDevice, and with the newer versions of the SoftDevices this is configured at boot-time instead. This is required for DFU to be useful, since you can't reprogram the chip from itself.