TDA4VM: HS-FS variant does not boot

Hi Bart,

Bart Philips said:

Is it possible to run the SDK software on the HS-FS variants without programming the customer keys? We understood that from the 8.6 SDK, HS-FS versions are supported in the SDK, but does that mean that the SDK can run without programming a key?

Yes, it is possible to run SDK on HS-FS if you have chosen the right boot binaries. The Linux HS-FS support for J721E SR1.1 devices is not supported in SDK 8.6.

Bart Philips said:

If we are able to run the HS-FS without programming the key, are there pre-built binaries available that we can use to see if the board boots. I did try the prebuilt images from the LINUX-SDK 9.1 (both the j721e_sr2-hs-fs-evm and j721e_sr1_1-hs-evm versions of the tiboot3 and sysfw bootloaders), but I was not able to see any UART output. The GP version of the prebuilt binaries does run our previous board.

I am assuming this is your custom board, so TI's Bootloader binaries cannot be dropped in on your board and expect them to work. The SR1.1 devices are supported in 9.1 SDK, so if you have your custom bootloaders

Bart Philips said:

If we are not able to boot the HS-FS variant without programming the key, I guess the best way to test our board is to write the TI dummy keys using the Keywriter and then rebuild the SDK for j7-hs system? Is it possible to use the prebuilt-images as well in this case?

HS-FS devices should be bootable. Even in this case, unless you are running on a TI EVM with these samples, you won't be able to run the default TI Boot binaries on your board.

The TIFS binary is the only one that will remain unchanged on both HS-FS and HS-SE (w/ Dummy Keys), and all the other boot binaries would have to be from your board. ATF and OPTEE may remain unchanged if you are using the same UART as the TI EVM.

regards

Suman

Hi Suman,

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I have not been able to boot our board at all yet. I have tried the following things, but in none of the cases have I gotten any data on the MCU_UART (or WAKEUP_UART):

- Use the boot binaries from SDK 9.1 (from what I understood, I would need the sysfw-j721e_sr1_1-hs-fs-evm.itb and tiboot3-j721e_sr1_1-hs-fs-evm.bin files). I do understand that these may not work on our custom board, but I at least expect them to show some UART output: our previous board with a GP variant was able to boot using the SDK prebuilt sysfw and tiboot3 files.

- Use the keywriter from RTOS SDK 8.5. I used the J7x OTP Keywriter Packages SR1.1 (compatiblity says SDK 8.0 and later) and put the tifs binary and key at the required locations. I generated a certificate using the TI dummy keys and build the keywriter application successfully.

For both methods I tried booting with SD card and through DFU, but I did not get any response on the UART. The only information I was able to get is through the DFU SocId command (dfu-util -a SocId -U socid.bin):

-----------------------
SoC ID Header Info:
-----------------------
NumBlocks : [2]
-----------------------
SoC ID Public ROM Info:
-----------------------
SubBlockId : 1
SubBlockSize : 26
DeviceName : j7es
DeviceType : HSFS
DMSC ROM Version : [0, 1, 1, 1]
R5 ROM Version : [0, 1, 1, 1]
-----------------------
SoC ID Secure ROM Info:
-----------------------
Sec SubBlockId : 2
Sec SubBlockSize : 166
Sec Prime : 0
Sec Key Revision : 0
Sec Key Count : 0

Am I missing a step somewhere?

Kind regards,

Bart

Hi Bart,

Bart Philips said:

Use the boot binaries from SDK 9.1 (from what I understood, I would need the sysfw-j721e_sr1_1-hs-fs-evm.itb and tiboot3-j721e_sr1_1-hs-fs-evm.bin files). I do understand that these may not work on our custom board, but I at least expect them to show some UART output: our previous board with a GP variant was able to boot using the SDK prebuilt sysfw and tiboot3 files.

We will have all versions of HS-FS and HS-SE supported in the 9.2 SDK release, which is slated for the end of this week.

I am surprised that our tiboot3.bin worked on your GP board without any issues. Are you using the exact same DDR part with the same DDR size as the TI EVM and UART?

In anycase, with the HS-FS sample, I would suggest that you connect a JTAG to the MCU R5F core and see where it is stuck, and where the PC is. You can roughly tell from the Program Counter on how far along it has come on the bootloader.

regards

Suman