nRF51822-EK JLink CDC UART doesn't work within VirtualBox

[Bengt Florin]

I'm using nRF51822-EK and running Keil compiler on XP within VirtualBox in a Linux Mint-14 host. I can't get the UART properly working through Segger J-LINK. It shows up all right in Device Manager (JLink CDC UART) and in Hyperterm (COM17) , but no data is outputted. When connecting directly to the Linux/GtkTerm i.e. to '/dev/ttyACM3' it however works fine. The same result for both PCA10000 & PCA10001. I also tried different settings and compilations for hardware handshake. No change. Is this a known error due to VirtualBox or do I do something wrong here? J-LINK debugging and flash loading seem to work perfectly within VirtualBox.

[Göran Nordahl]

Got a similar problem running Win7 within VMware Fusion on a Mac.

[Bengt Florin]

So Ole, Håkon...any clues on this one?

[Ole Morten]

I'm not able to replicate this problem, at least not when doing things the other way around (Linux guest on Windows host), it works nicely for me. However, you should remember that when using the J-Link CDC, you must enable flow control on the PC side, no matter if flow control is used on the nRF51822 side. Could this be the problem?

Another thing is that it is perfectly possible to make the SDK, including flashing work natively on Linux, if you can live with not using Keil. You'll most likely also have to create a few Makefiles on your own, based on the ones that are already there. Take a look here for information on how to flash the softdevice.

[Radu B.]

I am having the same problem as Florin above.

I am using Master Control Panel 3.8.0.7 in a Virtualized Win 7 on a Ubuntu host (14.04 LTS) I can do flash programming just fine, but MCP will not work, failing with : "No response from master emulator" The MCP log can be found here: http://pastie.org/10090046

[Radu B.]

@Göran apparently you need to blacklist the native CDC driver on OSX. I read something about this on the segger forum.