I am having difficulty getting an older version of SAM-BA V2.8 to connect to one of our products. The product is legacy and I was told that V2.8 was used during its development. When I launch SAM-BA, the connection choice is COM1 and I am under the impression that it should be something like \usb\AT91SAM9261. I am working with a known good PCB and one that I am trying to troubleshoot from a customer. When I try to connect the only dialog I get is "NO VALID PROCESSOR ID FOUND", which is a fatal error. Any idea what to try?? Also, can anyone point me to the location to download a newer version of SAM-BA? I did not find it in the November 2011 discussion when searching SAM Boot Assistant.

Fourth hit for a Google of "SAM-BA"
http://www.atmel.com/tools/ATMELSAM-BAI ... AMMER.aspx

And yes you will need to fill in a small form to get the download. But you only need to fill it in once, and ATMEL will not spam you.

For 2.8, you'd better be using 32-bit XP, and make sure you haven't contaminated your system with newer USB CDC drivers. Using contemporaneous versions of SAM-BA is one method to get things to work, but the new version should recognize devices going back to beyond the 9261.

For the USB to activate your device would need to be in RomBOOT, not executing your code. This would mean defeating chip selects on external NAND or Data Flash devices strapping the system.

The other connection method which is often quite effective is via a SAM-ICE or J-LINK pod.

If your device boots Linux, see if uBoot can be used to query the system.