Flash utility for OMAP L138 erases nand's bad blocks

We had a batch of nand chips that all seemed to have blocks 6/7 fail regularly, so a lot of the devices we shipped keep getting sent back but the flashing utility is ignoring the bad blocks we mark.

So any ideas?

Hi Kevin,

            Kindly let us know the version of serial flasher utility you are trying to use?

The latest version of serial flasher utility has not been reported with any issues as you have mentioned.

Try the latest version of the utility.

NOTE: The latest version of serial flasher utility can be found on this wiki

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Serial_Boot_and_Flash_Loading_Utility_for_OMAP-L138#Obtaining_the_software

Regards

Iyshwarya

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I downloaded the latest from sourceforge 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvflashutils/files/OMAP-L138/v2.40/

the current function in device_nand.c for 2.4 is

// Function to determine if the spare bytes indicate a bad block
static Uint32 DEVICE_NAND_BB_checkSpareBytes(NAND_InfoHandle hNandInfo, Uint8 *spareBytes)
{
Uint32 i,j;
// Check all the free bytes (non-ECC bytes) for 0xFF
for (j = 0; j< hNandInfo->numOpsPerPage; j++)
{
for (i=0; i<DEVICE_NAND_ECC_START_OFFSET; i++)
{
if (spareBytes[i+hNandInfo->spareBytesPerOp*j] & 0x00FF != 0xFF)
return E_FAIL;
}
}

return E_PASS;
}

which ignores the bad blocks, and erases them.