Unable to program nRF51422 with sectorerase flag, forced chiperase to update FW?

[magnusss]

Hello,

I am having some problems with what i assume is the readback protection.
Is it possible to update the firmware of the device without deleting UIRC (serial number among other things)?

Softdevice: nrf51422_xxAA
using debug build with readback enabled.

.rbpconf        = 0xFFFFFFFF

Serial number is located in UICR at 0x1000800 and is 24 bytes long and is not set in the binary.

Trying to use sectorerase to avoid having to delete all data fails:

nrfjprog -f nrf51 --program debug_0.0.0.hex --sectorerase
Parsing hex file.
ERROR: The operation attempted is unavailable due to readback protection in
ERROR: your device. Please use --recover to unlock the device.

I am able to debug the device, so readback protection should not be enabled.

If i am not overlooking something then my remaining option has to be running one of the following commands before programming the device

nrfjprog --recover
nrfjprog --eraseall

thus deleting all data.

Br,
Magnus

[magnusss]

edit: Serial number is at 0x10001080, typo

[Daniel Wang]

magnusss said:

Is it possible to update the firmware of the device without deleting UIRC (serial number among other things)?

Yes, if readback protection is not enabled.

You can check with nrfjprog --memrd 0x10001004 , it returns FFFFFFFF when it's not enabled

If not enabledf, then maybe you have a very old version of nRF51 https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/11714/flash-external-nrf51422-with-nrf51-dk , or using old nrfjprog, or maybe have some HW issue with your board.