AM335x Production Programming

Hi,

The preferred method for flash programming depends on your needs. The easiest ways to boot and flash the AM335x EVM board are over UART, CPSW Ethernet or from SD card. You can find information about these boot and flash methods in this user's guide.

You can find step-by-step instructions on how to boot and flash the SPI memory via UART in this forum post. Please note that the UART boot and flash method is easy and can be easily done in Windows environment, but the speed of the connection is relatively slow.

The SD card method is also easy and it only requires a SD card and a serial connection to the board.

The boot and flash via Ethernet method is a lot faster, but requires you to have a tftp server on your host machine.

Also if you want to use the AM335x Flash Tool, you may install an Ubuntu virtual machine on your Windows host and use the flash script in the virtual Linux environment.

Best regards,
Miroslav

UART is far too slow for production an SD Card is just no practical.

The Flash Tool here is the best option http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/AM335x_Flash_Tool_User%27s_Guide

Is there a plan for Windows support?  I don't really want to tell my customer that they have to us Virtual Machine on production floor.

Thanks

Hi,

Is not the FLASHTOOL-AM335x software tool available now?

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/AM335x_Flash_Programmer_For_Ubuntu_Linux_User%27s_Guide#Download_and_Installation

http://www.ti.com/tool/flashtool

Best regards,

Daisuke

Hi Daisuke,

It has been available for Linux. There is, however, a ***COMING SOON*** label for Windows support, so it should probably be released very soon. http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/AM335x_Flash_Tool_User%27s_Guide

Best regards,
Miroslav

Hi Miroslav,

I cannot find it for Linux.

The following link describes its download.

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/AM335x_Flash_Programmer_For_Ubuntu_Linux_User%27s_Guide#Download_and_Installation

"The AM335x Flash Programmer for Ubuntu Linux is part of the FLASHTOOL-AM335x software tool that is available at http://www.ti.com/tool/flashtool."

Best regards,

Daisuke

Hi Daisuke,

I confirm that it is missing. I'll inform someone to take care of this and update this topic once it is uploaded.

Best regards,
Miroslav

Hi Miroslav,

Thank you for your reply.

I wait until it is available.
Please give this request your prompt attention.

Best regards,

Daisuke

I've been told this will be released some time in June.

Hi David,

Thank you for your reply.

I will check it in June!

Best regards,

Daisuke

For those folloiwng and looking for the Flash Tool for WIndows, our team is working on the GUI and we are expecting to have it ready by September. Sorry for the delay.

Hi rogerio,

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best regards,

Daisuke

Hi,

If you're on 2.1 silicon, why not boot over USB and flash that way. Will be way faster than JTAG and you can run from any platform (mac, pc, linux)

/d

Hi,

Thank you for your advice!

Best regards,

Daisuke

rogerio said:

For those folloiwng and looking for the Flash Tool for WIndows, our team is working on the GUI and we are expecting to have it ready by September. Sorry for the delay.

Are there any updates as to when the Windows version will be available?

Thanks,

Stuart

Stuart,

I will get you an update by coming Monday coming.

This windows GUI tool will support eMMC flash via USB ?

Ok, answers to 2 questions:

1) Schedule - we are working to have it ready by end of September.

2) The tool will support eMMC flash via USB in a future revision, most likelly by November.

Any update on if the tool is available yet?  If not when?  If yes, can someone provide a link?

Thanks,

Stuart

I'm late to the thread but by far the easiest way to handle production programming is to have the memory device programmed before board assembly.  Most distributors have a custom programming program for common devices.  For other than very small quantity runs, it will almost certainly save money and increase yield.

Stuart,

Sorry for late reply. Please give me few days and I will update this post. Yesterday I checked with our SW manager and tool is almost ready...there are few open actions and once I have more details, I will let you know.

Any update on this?  My customer is asking.

Thanks,

Stuart

I got feedback yesterday. It was told me the tool will be released before end of this month. Sorry for the delay.

Please check it here:

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/CCS_UniFlash_v3.0_Release_Candidate_Release_Notes

This is a step in the right direction, however i have a eMMC that must be programmed not a NAND.

Could this tool be used or a wiki be made to understand how to setup tftp and dhcp for AM335x USB0 booting as it is the last option on my boot sequence i would like this for production programming.

Note preprogramming NAND devices can potentially have bit errors due to the higher temperature RoHS process therefore the eMMC supplier recommended against preprogramming the Memory.

After getting USB boot to work in Linux as documented here:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/arm/sitara_arm/f/791/p/284639/1139985.aspx#1139985

I looked at using Uniflash. Had some initial comments based on my recent experience. I have only used Uniflash for AM335x USB boot with Linux.  "Step 1" as I call it getting a uboot command prompt"

If you use the full AM335x Flashtool files (debrick.xxx, flash-image.out etc.) you should be able to adapt uboot for e-mmc instead if NAND (Step 2).  My customer was happy with a u-boot prompt so we never got this far. Though everything here is working on NAND, I gotta assume eMMC works in a similar way (honestly never looked at eMMC).

>>Could this tool be used or a wiki be made to understand how to setup tftp and dhcp for AM335x USB0 booting

Been planning to update Step 1 as a Wiki, but not had a chance yet.   But the main 2  things to remember after http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Sitara_Uniflash_Quick_Start_Guide#Flashing_a_Board_using_USB

are:

1. Copy u-boot-spl.bin to u-boot-spl-restore.bin

2. Copy u-boot.img to u-boot-restore.img

to get a u-boot prompt.

Forgot I had a screen shot. 

Top left is the Uniflash GUI (with  u-boot-spl-restore.bin and u-boot-restore.img in the TFTP home folder). 

Top right is the AM335x EVM console showing u-boot booted over USB0.

Bottom left and tight are tftp and dhcp logs well hidden in C:\TI\uniflashv3\third_party\sitara\log but very useful for debug.

Curious which tool/process you ended up using in production process and if it was compatible with eMMC

I have not gone to production yet.

But the process will be booting off the usb0 TFTP then NFS for the root file system, finally formatting the eMMC and untaring the file system on to the eMMC.

Hello Everybody,

I have found this post on ti forum and it corresponds exactly to my problem.

In fact, this is my situation:

I work with SITARA ARM3359 and I use  am335x_sysbios_ind_sdk_1.1.0.4

I develop my program on CCSv5 installed on windows 7.

Actually, I flash my program thanks to Texas Instrument XDS100v2 USB but in production i want to use an usb method.

In fact, I want to have my program stored on a windows pc and when the sitara boot, I want to flash this program on it via usb.

I think that it is exactly what jmax204 wanted to do !

Do you have the solution to do this on a windows environment ?

Thanks a lot for your answer

Laurence

Did you consider the possibility of creating a Virtual Machine and then run Linux on it?

Hello,

The homogeneity lackness of the development tools surprise me a little bit: How is it possible to develop on CCSv5 with a Windows environment, possible to use an utility such as Uniflash on a Windows environment and NOT possible to make the package to flash with this tool on a Windows environment !

However, Do you know if is it planed by TI to enable the Flash Package Builder on a Windows Environment very soon ?

Thanks a lot for your answer

Laurence

The UniFlash tool is fully supported under Windows for production programming of Sitara processors.  What is not necessarily suppoorted is the creation of the "metafiles" that UniFlash tool will use.  The reason is that the "metafiles" are actually a full Linux kernel that mounts a network interface (RNDIS if USB) to perform a host to host file transfer.

Cross compiling a Linux kernel under Windows is very difficult, therefore we do not officially support it.  This is ussually not a problem, as most serious software devlopers are already using Linux (a Unix clone) as their host development environment for Sitara, even if their Sitara target application not using Linux.  Windows in gereral is not a great development environment for advanced software/firmware development, and in fact, most Windows development tools (including CCS) emulate a Unix like environment using Win32 builds of traditional Unix tools.

The metafiles are typically produced by engineering using Linux, and UniFlash can use these under Windows [or Linux] for production line programming.

Thanks,

Stuart

Hello Stuart,

Just a little precision for me: if I want tou flash my device via UART is it necessary to make the package toflash with linux ?

Thanks for your answer,

Laurence