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Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

stunt_man

I developed a custom board with nRF51822_xxAA on it, working on low voltage mode.

I can program some basic things on it using Keil uVision 5.15 and a J-link to flash the code. Everything works fine, as I can debug in Keil and see the value of my variables.

At this stage, here are my IROM and IRAM settings in Keil IROM : Start 0x0 - Size 0x40000 IRAM : Start 0x2000000 - Size 0x4000

Now, I'd like to make BLE advertising example work on my board. So I need Softdevice S110 on it. I got S110 v8.0.0 on Nordic website. Next step is to flash it on my board & adjust project settings in Keil (I mean IROM and IRAM).

1/ Flash Softdevice S110 v8.0.0 Between my board and Jlink, there is a custom voltage adapter (5.0V -> 1.8V). Problem: with 1.8V read by Jlink, neither nRFGo Studio, nore nrfjprog command seem to work to flash my board.

Is there any other software solutions to flash Softdevice on my board? I mean, it must exist. Otherwise, I won't be able to load some code in my board and debug it as previously checked... Tell me if I am wrong!

2/Adjust project settings in Keil In s110_nRF51 migration document, new version of SoftDevice (8.0.0) is said to be 96 kB, including MBR. Documentation suggests following settings: IROM : Start 0x18000 - Size 0x28000 (for the 256 kB variant) IRAM : Start 0x2002000 - Size 0x2000

My questions are related to MBR. Is it included directly in S110 hex file? Is it necessary? Yes -> How to install it? No -> In this case, what are the needed settings for IROM and IRAM?

  • 0
    1. You can use JLink.exe directly which is a segger tool. It identifies nordic chips and you can find more information here and here
  • 0 in reply to Susheel Nuguru

    Thank you Aryan!

    I tried to get SoftDevice through JLink but I'm still having some issues

    First, I converted SoftDeviceV8.0 Hex file to a bin file through an 'arm-none-eabi-objcopy' command (gcc version: gcc-arm-none-eabi-49). That gives me a .bin file (size around 90 kb).

    Then, after having erased my flash, I downloaded the created bin file to my card through Jlink at address 0x0 (loadbin softdevice.bin 0).

    Then with my IDE (Keil), I download my code at address 0x18000. I started the card and nothing happened...

    I tried download my code at address 0x0 with Keil (after another flash erasing) and my code worked well (I mean this part of code does not use Soft Device).

    OK. Flash erasing and then I converted hex associated to my code to a bin and flashed my card with it at address 0. Nothing happened...

    2 options:

    • my bins got problems
    • something bad happened during flash download
  • 0 in reply to Susheel Nuguru

    Some more information: I tried all of these operations several times and described problems occured every time.

    Is there any official softdevice (S110) bin file that exists so I would be able to see if the problem came from the bin I was generating or from flash download?

  • 0 in reply to Susheel Nuguru

    sorry for late response. Lost this thread. MBR comes within the softdevice hex file. Converting hex to bin should be ok except for one thing. If the hex file contains UICR addresses, then the binary file will become really big. This is because the binary file is with sequential addresses. I have not personally verified flashing bin, but it should work fine if there are no UICR settings. I see that you are using S110 v8.0.0 and this softdevice does not configure anything in UICR register neither does MBR.

  • 0

    Thank you Aryan. I managed to flash Softdevice (S110 v8.0.0) in my board a few days ago, so I can confirm what you say.

    If anybody needs the process:

    1/ Convert Softdevice hex to bin using arm-none-eabi-objcopy (detailled command can be found at step 

1 from this website: www.funwithelectronics.com/
2/ To flash Softdevice in the board with J-link tools:
- launch J-link commander tools
- select device (e.g 'device nRF_51422_xxAC' depending on the name of your board as read by J-link)
- erase flash (just type erase)
- load Softdevice bin in flash at address 0x0 (Softdevice S110 v8.0.0 contains MBR) : loadbin your_softdevice.bin 0 
- load your bin (address depends on the size of your ROM)
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