• State TI Thinks Resolved
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 1 reply
  • Answers 1 answer
  • Subscribers 41 subscribers
  • Views 1021 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Support feedback
Options
Options
Similar topics

This thread has been locked.

If you have a related question, please click the "Ask a related question" button in the top right corner. The newly created question will be automatically linked to this question.

CC3200: How to merge mcuimg.bin and servicepack.bin into one file less than 512KB

David Bai
Intellectual 1835 points
Part Number: CC3200
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: UNIFLASH

Now, customer want to download the whole image with their main MCU. First, they need generate the image with uniflash. 

Illustration:

GW_SPIWIFI_PROJ.bin - customer’s original mcu image file generated by CCS;

Programming.bin -  generated from uniflash Gang Programming, it contains the Format Storage Command, the mcuimg.bin and Service Pack.

1. When they choose the Storage Capacity Bytes as 1MB, uniflash can generate the Programming.bin successfully. But the size of Programming.bin is 1MB, it is too large to download with customer’s main MCU(the main MCU  just has 600kB~700KB free space to store the  Programming.bin). The following pictures are the test results on CC3200launchpad.

 

2. Due to the flash free space limited, they try to set the Storage Capacity Bytes as 512KB. But there is an error: Total size of files + the Gang image exceeded the storage size.

 

3. However, they try to send the 512KB Programming.bin (just contains the Format Storage Command and mcuimg.bin) with CLI, and  then send the servicepack.bin  with uniflash asynchronously. After reset, the CC3200launchpad can execute and run normally.

Step 1:

Step 2:

4. From the above step, we can see that if customer send the mcuimg.bin and service pack separately, there are still 17 blocks free space. But why the mcuimg.bin and servicepack.bin can’t be merged into one file less than 512KB? Is there anyone know how to merge them with the 512KB Storage Capacity Bytes option using uniflash?  Thanks.

  • 0
    TI__Mastermind 38980 points
    Hi David,

    I believe most of this has been discussed offline, but I will post a response here for forum searchability:

    The Image Programming feature uses the serial flash to host the image and the same serial flash is also used during extraction of this image (while building the file system and putting all files in place). Since during the extraction stage, the image cannot get overridden (it is not done in-place), you actually have a limitation in which you cannot exploit the entire 1MB even though you final content is less than 1MB. There are also some metadata contents and around 50 blocks reserved for system/configuration files during the process. When doing it with mcuimg only, it can fit since the servicepack by itself takes 256KB.

    Please note that it is a very bad idea to make use of only 512KB as it means that the FAT is limited to this size where you have the entire 1MB to use.
    Also, according to the format size, the entire serial flash should be erased before you actually program the image (as described in the Embedded Programming package).

    Please note that it is not possible to unify the servicepack and mcuimg as these are 2 different files, and also only one of them is secured.


    Best regards,
    Sarah