Failed to download RAMcode with an already programmed nRF52810

[Andersta]

Hi,

I am troubleshooting on a nRF52810 that fails to erase/program. The device has been working in our product with a application software, but now it will not program. When we try to program it with a segger Jlink we get a "Failed to download RAMcode" error.

After searching the forum we tried to recover the device with nRFgo studio, but it returns a Unknown error. After that I tried to erase the device with the following commands, but without any luck:

r
w4 4001e504 2
w4 4001e50c 1
w4 4001e514 1
qc

Do you have any suggestion for how to erase/program the device again or what could be wrong?

Is it possible that the flash of device is somehow broken? Is there a way i can check this?

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

Do you have other identical units that work with the same setup? I suggest that you try nrfjprog with the --recover argument. This option will make repeated attempts to perform a full erase of the flash.  

Is it possible that the flash of device is somehow broken? Is there a way i can check this?

I would have expected a different error if that was the case. A verification error after programming a file for instance. 

[Andersta]

Hi Vidar,

Thanks for answering my question. 

The nrfjprog -- recover did the job!

Do you have any idea what could cause the device to this state? 

Is the difference of erase by J-link commander and nrfjprog --recover that it tries to erase multiple times?

[Vidar Berg]

Glad to hear that it worked. --recover is mainly used if you need to disable --readback protection on the chip. Usually you would use -e/--erase which is similar to the erase option in jlink commander. It's possible that this could have worked too. 

I'm not sure what causes this error in jlink commander. The only "bad" state that I know of is if the device is going in a constant WD reset loop as explained in errata  [176] System: Flash erase through CTRL-AP fails due to watchdog time-out