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Combining and Separating Images for Flash Bootloader

Akash Patel
Expert 6245 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: TM4C1231H6PZ

Hi team,

I am looking at the flash based bootloader for the TM4C1231H6PZ found here: http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/spmu367/spmu367.pdf

A few questions that I had:

  • Is there a size limitation to this bootloader?
  • If I want to have a backup image available, is there a way to combine the images (main and backup) to be loaded onto the flash?
  • Can we choose which location these are programmed to and be able to split a combined image (split the main from the backup on the fly)?

Regards,

Akash Patel

  • 0
    TI__Guru 59540 points
    Akash,

    It seems the link you provided is to the ROM users guide and not to the Flash Bootloader User Guide as you intended. The Flash Bootloader UG is located at this link: www.ti.com/.../spmu301a.pdf

    If you review the configuration chapter in the document, I think this should answer most of your questions. Specifically, the start address of the application(s) must be at a boundary that is a multiple of 1024. This means that as long as the boot loader does not overlap the address which you select as the start of your application at the lowest address then, there should be no issues. Subsequent images should be located at similar 1024 byte boundaries. Also note the requirement for the location of the vector tables for each of your images.

    In regard to choosing where to locate the images, this would be up to you and could be somehow managed by your custom boot loader or within your custom host program. This sounds like a good case for to make use of a common format such as intel HEX with addresses encoded into it. Something like an intel hex format would be useful for you and could be managed on the host side to split the code and interpret the address info within the hex file.