NCS 2.0.0 samples will not work on nRF52840 Dongle

[Antonio]

Hi,

I am trying to run any of the samples, even the most basic ones as blinky, and they will not run on my nRF52840 dongle, which has a header to program directly with jlink, using another DK to connect with debug out.

The dongle works perfectly using SDK 17.1.0, and same connection configuration.

They (samples) all work perfectly in any of the other nordic DK using NCS 2.0.0.

I have a mac pro with M1 running with all of the recommendations for vscode and jlink. (Intel versions)

Even trying to debug, enabling debug options at build time, will not give me access to the disassembly, or run for that matter.

At the beginning I thought that it could be the code needed to do the voltage setup for the leds to work, but then I saw that it was included on the board_nrf52840dongle_nrf52840_init() function inside the board.c for the dongle, as well as the code in the generated zhephyr.lst.

Can you tell me if I am doing something wrong?

Thanks!

[Edvin]

But I guess it worked if you would program the default bootloader back in?

By default, when you are building for the board nrf52840dongle_nrf52840, NCS will add an offset of the image to start after the MBR from the nRF5 SDK bootloader. You can see it in NCS\zephyr\boards\arm\nrf52840dongle_nrf52840\kconfig.defconfig, line 23.

What you also can see there is that this is dependent on the config BOARD_HAS_NRF5_BOOTLOADER which is set to 'y' by default, when you are using the nrf52840dongle_nrf52840 board. 

So try to add this line to your prj.conf:

CONFIG_BOARD_HAS_NRF5_BOOTLOADER=n. Then you should see that the generated application image will no longer have the 0x1000 offset, and you should be able to program it with an external programmer, and it should run as you'd expect. 

Without that configuration, this is the resulting .hex file:

When there is no MBR present to start the application at 0x1000, then nothing will happen.

Best regards,

Edvin

[Antonio]

It worked beautifully. Thanks!!!