Reflashing J-Link on nRF51-DK

[Crllo]

Hi everyone,

sadly one of my nRF51-DK boards seems to be terribly bricked. During firmware update nRFgo Studio (on Windows) stopped responding. After a (long) while I restarted everything but then during another try I got an information that firmware update failed.

I've tried running jlink.exe and use advice from here: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ but I can see a message that "Failed to activate bootloader (timeout)".

nRFgo Studio recognizes nRF51-DK and if I wire up external nRF51822 chip to it it recognizes it. The problem is I can neither program any device using on board J-Link nor update its firmware.

Is there any possibility to reflash the bootloader using another nRF51-DK or I would need stand alone J-Link to do so?

Hope we can figure something out to fix it, thanks!

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

Are you able to enter bootloader mode on the atmel chip that contains the J-Link interface? Hold down the "IF BOOT/RESET" button on the DK while switching it on, and it should show up as an external disk named "BOOTLOADER". Try to flash the entire J-Link interface by dragging the "J-Link OB-SAM3U128-V2-NordicSemi 150311.bin" file over to the external disk. It can be downloaded here: www.nordicsemi.com/.../38671

[Crllo]

Hi Stian,

yes, theoretically I can enter the bootloader mode - the LED flashes, I copy the file to "BOOTLOADER" device and the LED blinks faster. After turning the power off and on again and running nRFgo Studio I still get the same message - about a need for firmware update. Then it fails again.

If you have any idea how to diagnose the problem I have 50 MHz oscilloscope and multimeter I can use.

[RK]

First of all - do you have a recent jlink on your PC. After you flash the device with the bootloader you should be able to go to the command line and type

jlink.exe -if swd -device nrf51822

and if it connects it will upgrade the firmware for you. If you can get it that far, I'd hope it would be a little more stable.

[Crllo]

I connected debug out from another and working nrf51-dk to debug-in of the bricked one to check if nRF chip itself works. I've flashed one of the examples and it started broadcasting. Then I ran nRFgo Studio. It updated j-link firmware, crashed once more but after that everything is working fine.

[tesc]

Hi,

For anyone finding this thread when searching for the J-Link firmware for the nRF51 DK, and figuring out the five years old link from Stian Røed Hafskjold points to a web page that no longer exists, you can find the latest interface MCU firmware at the nRF52 DK download page, here:

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-Tools/Development-Kits/nRF52-DK/Download#infotabs

You can use that interface MCU firmware for the nRF51 DK as well.

Regards,
Terje