Disable readback protection on an nRF9160

RE: Disable readback protection on an nRF9160

Martin Lesund — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:47:41 GMT

Hi Michael,

I am glad to hear that you got it to work again.

Most likely the device was in some kind of weird state and the power-on reset fixed it.
(no, a power on reset will not remove readback protection when that is enabled)

RE: Disable readback protection on an nRF9160

MJD093 — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:30:39 GMT

It looks like it fixed itself with a power on reset? The battery died overnight, charging the unit and trying 'nrfjprog -e' seems to have worked. JLinkExe is not showing any issues now connection to the CORTEX-M33 as it was yesterday?

Would a power on reset really remove readback protection?

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../7142.log.log

RE: Disable readback protection on an nRF9160

Martin Lesund — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:23:01 GMT

Could you run the commands with the '--log' at the end to gather the debug log.
e.g. "nrfjprog --recover --log"

and then share the log in this case?

RE: Disable readback protection on an nRF9160

MJD093 — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:08:43 GMT

Hi Martin,

I am using the latest JLink and nrfjprog versions as you showed above:

nrfjprog --version
nrfjprog version: 10.11.1 
JLinkARM.dll version: 6.86f

I updated my tools while trying to unlock the nRF91 but as shown in the original post, even with the latest tools the device will not remove it's protections

RE: Disable readback protection on an nRF9160

Martin Lesund — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 12:46:02 GMT

Hi Michael,

Which version of nrfjprog do you have?
open cmd --> 'nrfjprog -v'

Please make sure you are running version 10.11.1

Release notes in version 10.11.1

Update bundled Segger installers and tar balls to v6.86f.

Updated doc string for NRFJPROG_erase_all to make the note about NVM block 
protection more clear.

Add function NRFJPROG_is_eraseprotect_enabled(). In devices that does not 
support erase protection (nrf51, nrf52), this function returns false.

If erase protection is enabled, erase functions will now return 
NOT_AVAILABLE_BECAUSE_PROTECTION if the target operation is not possible.

NRFJPROG_recover() can now disable erase protection if no readback protection
is enabled.

Fixed issue where in nRF53 devices, NRFJPROG_readback_protect(SECURE) did not 
enable secure ap protection.

Fixed issue where in devices with trustzone, nrfjprog could select NVMC_NS for 
erase operations, causing the erase operation to fail silently.

Fixed issue there if SECURE readbackprotection was enabled, NRFJPROG_read(), 
NRFJPROG_read_u32(), NRFJPROG_write(), and NRFJPROG_write_u32() would fail with 
NOT_AVAILABLE_BECAUSE_PROTECTION even though the operation was possible.

Best regards,
Martin L.