nRF52840 Dongle Firmware Flash

[Storvagun]

Hi,

due to some evaluation effort of nRF52840 Dongle, I went through whole Zephyr project building of their Bluetooth hci_uart example. After couple of ardous hours(or more), I was finally able to generate appropriate .hex for nRF52840 Dongle(PCA10059).

I also went through the procedure of building drivers for it (nRF's own pc-ble-driver).

When all was done, I was not expecting problems with flashing of the dongle itself. But nevertheless they appeared.

Initially, I was using Zephyr's procedure ninja flash. This basically calls nrfjprog with correct data. I also used nrfjprog directly. I got this error both times:

ERROR: JLinkARM DLL reported an error. Try again. If error condition
ERROR: persists, run the same command again with argument --log, contact Nordic
ERROR: Semiconductor and provide the generated log.log file to them.

Needless to say it persisted, so I have log with error part:

2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . nRF52_power_debug_and_system_regions
2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . . nRF52_write_debug_port_register
2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . . nRF52_write_debug_port_register:    JLink:    T83B4740 000:858
2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . . nRF52_write_debug_port_register:    JLink:    JLINK_CORESIGHT_WriteAPDPReg(DP reg 0x02, 0x00000000)
2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . . nRF52_write_debug_port_register:    JLink:      returns -1
2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . . nRF52_write_debug_port_register:    JLink:     (0001ms, 0857ms total)  
2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . . nRF52_write_debug_port_register:    JLinkARM.dll CORESIGHT_WriteAPDPReg returned error -1.

2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . . . . . nRF52_power_debug_and_system_regions:    JLinkARM.dll CORESIGHT_WriteAPDPReg returned error -102.

2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  nRF_close_dll
2019-Feb-17 18:21:24  . nRF52_close_dll

I have repeated this procedure on windows 10(v1703), and on Ubuntu 18.04LTS.

I'm using all the latest versions of all involved software components.

When I flash, both JLink and nRF52840 Dongle are in ports, so I don't believe this is power related problem.

Could you please be so kind to tell me what could cause this behavior?

I browsed DevZone, and I've seen other people had similar problems with different boards, but no definite solution was mentioned.

Thanks!

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

How have you connected the J-Link to the dongle? 

Best regards,
Jørgen

[Storvagun]

Hi,

thanks for the quick answer.

Yes, the dongle is connected to the JLink through the 9 pin Cortex M adapter.

Alltogether, it looks like this:

I believe the pinouts are correctly connected.

Also, I've tried with power supply over JLink and without it. Both cases produce the same error.

To reiterate - when executing nrfjprog  command, both  dongle and the JLink were plugged in the PC. Immediately after starting nrfjprog, red LED started pulsing slowly on the dongle.

Best Regards,

Vladimir 

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

It could look like you have mounted the socket the wrong way on the image, the opening on the socket should face this way (towards pin 1 on the solder pads):

[Storvagun]

Hi Jørgen,

Sorry - I've sen't the wrong picture, the dongle was plugged correctly - I've taken care that pins match.

This is correct connected state, and only this is how I attempted to perform flash.

Still the same problem:

C:\Users\vladimir\zephyr\samples\bluetooth\hci_uart\build>ninja flash
[0/1] Flashing nrf52840_pca10059
Using runner: nrfjprog
Flashing file: C:/Users/vladimir/zephyr/samples/bluetooth/hci_uart/build/zephyr/zephyr.hex
ERROR: JLinkARM DLL reported an error. Try again. If error condition
ERROR: persists, run the same command again with argument --log, contact Nordic
ERROR: Semiconductor and provide the generated log.log file to them.
error: command exited with status 33: nrfjprog --program C:/Users/vladimir/zephyr/samples/bluetooth/hci_uart/build/zephyr/zephyr.hex -f NRF52 --snr 609301412 --sectoranduicrerase
run as "west -v ... flash ..." for a stack trace

nrfjprog return code is 33, and based on now outdated document - it's what we already knew - some kind of JLinkARM.dll problem.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Have you tested to flash any of our development kits with the same J-Link? I tested a J-Trace Pro with the dongle, and I'm able to flash it just fine with nrfjprog.

Error -102 from JLinkARM.dll indicate that the nRF chip was not found.