OMAP WinCE Flash Writing Problems

Regarding the flash tool, we do have a newer tool available which works with the OMAP 35xx.  This tool can be configured to work with a very wide range of flash devices, whereas EVMFlash required a new release to add support for specific flash devices.

It can be downloaded from https://gforge.ti.com/gf/project/flash. The user guide is at http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Flash_v1.0_User_Guide.

I don't have the answer for your second question unfortunately.

Greg

Hi, Greg

Thanks for your reply.

I have checked the links you provide,  all information mentioned in the links are all for Linux, does this tool support Flash Writing for WinCE (MLO/EBOOT/NK.bin)??

Thanks & BR

Stephen

Well, the Flash tool doesn't care about what the contents of your data are (Linux vs. WinCE vs. whatever).  If you have a binary file, and you know the destination address, it will do the work.

Hi Greg,

Take care. While I totally agree that the flashing tool doesn't care about what's it's flashing, WinCE might do - At least it did :-) Therefore the special WinCE mode in the old CSST tool. I don't know if it's still the case, but originally WinCE needed special treatment of the NAND spare area for accepting the block being valid (or something in this area). I can't remember exactly if it was the ECC which was stored differently or if it was something more which needed to me written to the spare area?

This might very well have changed since I looked in the this last time (~3 years back), but I though I would mention it in case you weren't already aware?

Best regards and thanks
  Søren

Soren, thanks for the comments.  I will be sure to understand what this "WinCE" mode did on the previous tool.  Nothing like that has been implemented thus far on Flash v1.x.

Hi Greg,

You are welcome - To give you a little more information on this one. I remember we had WinCE flashing working with the special WinCE mode long time ago. Then Microsoft changed something in the way WinCE expected the flash to layouted (ECC, bad block markers/management, what ever, I'm unfortunatelynot fully aware), and from this point you couldn't make a working WinCE flashing session regardless of using the normal CSST raw-mode or using the special WinCE-mode...

The flashing session of cause worked properly, but WinCE couldn't boot afterwards. What I'm trying to say is, that even though you might find part of what's needed to make it work in the old code I'm not sure you will find the full truth for the latest WinCE releases, so step with care :-) - Don't hesitate to let me know in case I can be to any further help ;-)

Best regards - Good luck
  Søren

Stephen,

Were you able to get past the flashing problem with the tool Greg pointed to? If yes, well and good. In the long term we do expect this to be the std tool used across platforms and OSes but is not currently tested with WinCE. If you were successful in using this tool with your WinCE images please let us know. It is useful information.

If you are still facing an issue, we have another (intermediate) cmd line based serial flash utility that you can modify for the specific NAND you are using.

In the future please post WinCE specific questions to the WinCE forum http://e2e.ti.com/support/embedded/f/353.aspx. Any hw specific question that you feel should be same regardless of the OS is appropriate for the OMAP forum. This will make sure that the right people are seeing your posts.

Thanks.

Jatin

Hi, all

I have tried some times, but all failed.

By the way, As jatin mentioned, you have another cmd line based serial flash utility, would you pls tell me how to get it and use with it?

thanks

Do you by any chance have access to the AM35x release from TI (this is a limited availability release and not yet available for public download)? If so this utility is included under the tools directory. If not then I should be able to get you that tool in a day or two. 

Basically it does rely on having a working WinCE NAND driver for the NAND you are using. If you have that, the utility can be built to include your working NAND driver. That way we don't need 2 different working NAND drivers (one in the utility and one inside the BSP).

Hi, Jatin

I have not right to get AM35x BSP, so pls help me to get this tool.

About WinCE Nand Driver, I have sucessfully supported our nand flash under WinCE OMAP3530 BSP.

Thanks & BR,

Stephen zhang

Stephen,

Whenever you get a chance to try the utility on your board please update this post: whether it solved your problem or if it is still an issue. Thanks.

Jatin

Jatin,

 I am sorry for relpy so later, last week is our national day holiday in China, so ...

I have tried your tools following the instructions mentioned in documents along with tools, I did the first step to the tenth step sucessfully, but then I can not see "? "  on Terminal.

So I stop here...

Thanks & Best Regards,

Stephen Zhang

Hello Stephen,

I have a few questions:

1. which version of the WINCE BSP are you using?

2. when you finish the pserial steps (step 8 in the omap35x-am35x-wince-serial-flashing.doc), do you start a terminal other than HyperTerminal to continue to step 9?  I would suggest you to continue to step 9 with HyperTerminal if this is not the case.

3. Do you see anything, not necessarily "?",  coming out from the serial port of the target board at all?

4. If you have an OMAP3530 EVM, could you try the steps as is to see if it works?

Regards,

WM

Hi, WM

1. I am working on Bsquare WinCE BSP 6.14.01

2. I have tried that. The same

3. I can see nothing ...

4. I did try it on OMAP3530 EVM2

Hi Stephen,

Please modify the function OEMReadDebugByte() in  TI_EVM_3530\SRC\BOOT\SERIAL\serial.c to the following and see if this helps

WM

INT OEMReadDebugByte()
{
    OMAP_UART_REGS *pUartRegs = OALPAtoUA(OMAP_UART3_REGS_PA);
    UINT8 ch = OEM_DEBUG_READ_NODATA;
    UINT8 status;

    if (bInitDone)
    {
        status = INREG8(&pUartRegs->LSR);
        if((status & UART_LSR_RX_FIFO_E) == 0) return OEM_DEBUG_READ_NODATA;

        ch = INREG8(&pUartRegs->RHR);
        if ((status & UART_LSR_RX_ERROR) != 0) ch = OEM_DEBUG_COM_ERROR;
    }
    return (INT)ch;
}

Stephen,

We have made a package for the BSP 6.15 release (should most probably work with BSP 6.14.01 as well). Please follow the instructions in the attached zip. We have verified this on the OMAP35x EVM. The change in serial.c mentioned by WM above is already included in the zip. So you don't have to do that explicitly (The am35x was from a different code base which had changes in directory structure/files etc and not completely compatible. Sorry about that.).

Let us know how this goes. 

Jatin

Stephen: Did you get a chance to try this new package.  Thanks.

Hi，Jatin

I am sorry to say that it does not work.....

Hello Stephen,

Thanks for responding. 

If you have not done so, could you use the pre-built binaries pserial.exe, TIEVM3530-nand.raw and XLDRUART.nb0 included in the last zip file posted by Jatin and follow the steps in omap35x-am35x-wince-serial-flashing.doc to flash TIEVM3530-nand.raw on to your OMAP 3530 EVM.

This will limit the scope to where we can figure out the issue.

We tested those binaries on OMAP 3530 EVM and they work fine.

Let us know your result and we can follow up from there.

WM