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Designing replacement pack controller, bqWizard crashed, now I get 'device is sealed'

Chris CC
Prodigy 90 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: BQ78PL116, BQWIZARD

I'm working on the design of a replacement board for a 3-cell battery pack used in an industrial portable computer. The current design uses a BQ2092; for the new one we are intending to use a BQ78PL116 and have the eval board for testing and verification. If we approve the device we would probably end up buying a few thousand for the first production run. Up to now it was looking fairly good.

However today when using the bqWizard software the program crashed, and when I re-started it, it then stated that the 'device is sealed' and asked for a password. I've done whatever I can to get it out of this mode, including disconnecting the cells and whatever, but every time I re-start it will demand a device password again.

I did not at any time ever set a password or seal the device. Everything was working until the instant the software crashed. From that point onwards I have been getting the 'device is sealed' error.

I repeat, I did not set a password at any time, ever.

How can this be fixed? I have seen in another message a suggestion that to do so would require replacement of the BQ78PL116 but it is hard for me to believe that the  device can be for all intents and purposes destroyed so easily by a simple software crash. Clearly somehow during the software malfunction (whatever it was) it has locked the device. If so, has this been observed before and/or does it use a predictable password when doing so?

While I do have a (single) spare device and a re-flow station, I'm uncomfortable with the concept that software failure destroys hardware so effectively, and in particular would be nervous that this is going to happen again and again.

  • 0
    TI__Guru 73830 points

    Chris

    It is possible to corrupt the flash memory if a reset or loss of power occurs during a flash memory write. The device is usually not recoverable after that occurs and will need to be replaced.

    Regards

    Tom

  • 0 in reply to ThomasCosby
    Prodigy 90 points

    Tom,

    Thanks for the answer, that's what I feared (assuming that by 'reset' you mean 'the bqWizard crashes').

    I only have one spare chip so I suppose I'd better order in some more in case this happens again (not being in the US I don't get the luxury of overnight delivery for urgent parts).

    To be frank it doesn't really inspire confidence in the platform; while it's nuisance value to happen during development I shudder to think of the consequences if this started happening after we deploy a few thousand of them. Can you advise if TI knows of similar failures occurring after the device is permanently wired to a pack and has been mastered from the golden flash file? Does the device ever need to write to the flash on its own (i.e. to update learned data), or is that stored separately?