Problem with nrfjprog and corrupted images

[Marius Heil]

Hi,

I use GCC for compilation and nrfjprog for flashing. A few weeks ago I needed to switch on compiler optimization (Level 1) because my code grew a little too big. Now I've often experienced corrupt images after flashing only the application. nRFgo Studio tells me that the SoftDevice is still intact, but my application crashes and behaves weird until I do a full chip erase. A readback of the application.hex from a corrupt state gave me a 900kb file instead of the 200kb from an intact application.

I use this command for flashing the application: nrfjprog -s 12345 --program hexfile.hex --sectorerase --family NRF51 && nrfjprog -s 12345 --reset

When I do a chiperase, flash the softdevice and then the application, everything works as expected.

Any ideas? Marius

[Susheel Nuguru]

how is this problem related to nrfjprog? can you flash your application using nrfgo studio and see if the behavior is different?

[Marius Heil]

The error only happens occasionally. I do not use nrfGostudio much because nrfjprog is scriptable, but I'd guess nrfgo studio uses nrfjprog internally...?

[Susheel Nuguru]

does your application.hex contain any UICR register address. If it does, I think the older version of nrfjprog had a problem with the readback. it would get confused with the size and try to read the whole address space in between. That would be lot more than 900KB!! Which version of nrfjprog are you using?

[Marius Heil]

It tells me that it's nrfjprog 7.5.2 together with LJinkARM.dll version 5.2a. I do not have any UICR registers in my code. Not knowingly that is, is there any way to check my compiled hex file for registers?

[Susheel Nuguru]

normally i read it from the chip

nrfjprog -e nrfjprog --memrd 0x10001000 --n 200 now you see all UICR registers are clean

nrfjprog --program my_application.hex nrfjprog --memrd 0x10001000 --n 200

now you will know if anything else is written to UICR

I have missed to see that you mentioned that the error happens occasionally. any possibility that i can get the application.hex to try it out here?