Flashing alternating applications nRFgo Studio

[karlsen]

Two applications using the same softdevice, s110, blinky and beacon from the examples.

Flashing softdevice and beacon successfully. Replacing beacon app by blinky successfully. Trying to replace blinky by beacon:

"Application .. programming failed. The flash is not erased."

To get beacon back on I have to erase and reflash softdevice! May seem like a minor, but why? Makes me think that there is something that I do not understand about the memory structure.

Why can't I freely flash back and forth different applications in the 0x18000 area without going back and reflash softdevice?

Sorry did not know how to do this since I couldn't add images to comment. Yes both Blinky and Beacon start in 0x18000. But they are using a different address type Extended Segment instead of Extended Linear, I am using the armgcc toolchain if that has something to do with it.

[Petter Myhre]

I'm able to do this. Are you using the latest version of nRFgo Studio? I'm not sure how to reproduce the error you get. If I try to flash a hex with memory address 0x00000 after I have flash a SoftDevice I get.

Are you sure your blinky project starts at 0x18000? You can check the the hex file.

It should look like this if the start address is 0x18000:

Not like this (start address is 0x00000):

Edit 06.07.2015: I have been able to reproduce the error, this is a bug in nRFgo Studio. It should be able to erase the old application and flash the new one. This will be fixed in the next release. In the meantime an Erase all is required.

[karlsen]

Thanks for trying to help. I edited my original question above since I could not add images in comment.

[karlsen]

After lots of investigations using the JLinkExe I have reached the following conclusion. Each area in the flash can only be flashed once by the JLink tools, if you want to flash that area again you need to do a full erase of the flash before flashing the area. Maybe this is expected behavior but I have not seen it in any documentation.

[RK]

That is an incorrect conclusion. JLink is more than capable of erasing and reprogamming any and all bits of the chip without full chip erase, lots of us do it every single day. So you have a problem, but that's not the answer.

[karlsen]

Ok, thanks for the answer. Do I have a hardware problem then? I have: Firmware: J-Link OB-SAM3U128-V2-NordicSemi compiled Jun 16 2015 17:08:23 Hardware: V1.00 I do:

w4 4001e504 2 // enable erase

w4 4001e50c 1 // erase all

r

w4 4001e504 1 // enable write

then w4 mem value //check with mem32 and correct content

then again w4 mem anotherValue //check with mem32, not correct content anymore