Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

RE: Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

Susheel Nuguru — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 05:19:49 GMT

Thank you for coming back and updating this thread.

RE: Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

stunt_man — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 21:34:26 GMT

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)

RE: Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

Susheel Nuguru — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 11:34:10 GMT

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.

RE: Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

stunt_man — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 23:09:41 GMT

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?

RE: Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

stunt_man — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 23:07:08 GMT

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

RE: Unable to load Softdevice on custom board

Susheel Nuguru — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 07:57:29 GMT

You can use JLink.exe directly which is a segger tool. It identifies nordic chips and you can find more information here and here