AT91SAM7S Boot Assistant (SAM-BA)

Juro · **Joined:** Tue Oct 18, 2005 6:42 pm **Posts:** 43

CroQueTTe wrote:

By the way, if you want to understand the protocol SAM-BA Boot uses for uart & usb communication, please ask the at91support group for the software source code.

Thank you very much for your advise! I got the source code and it si very helpful for me.

gerhardf · **Joined:** Thu Dec 02, 2004 2:28 pm **Posts:** 504

hello,
are there any plans for supporting a comandline version of SAM-BA?
Would be helpful for productino programming.

regards
gerhard

Fredo_Boyer · **Posted:** Wed Nov 16, 2005 10:32 am

Hi Juro,

Yes !
The SAM-BA v2.0 release candidate should support a command line version...
The release candidate of that version should be available soon in 2006
The command line option will be one of the new features...

Bye

Fredo_Boyer · **Posted:** Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:46 pm

You will be able to find the latest version of SAM-BA now in the Flash Programming Section:

http://www.at91.com/www/phpBB2_mirror/v ... .php4?f=18

babulevich · **Joined:** Mon Feb 27, 2006 6:07 am **Posts:** 3

CroQueTTe wrote:

You're welcome

By the way, if you want to understand the protocol SAM-BA Boot uses for uart & usb communication, please ask the at91support group for the software source code.

Bye !

Please advise, what is their e-mail address?

Fredo_Boyer · **Posted:** Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:31 am

at91support@rfo.atmel.com

Juro · **Joined:** Tue Oct 18, 2005 6:42 pm **Posts:** 43

henkvisser wrote:

Can't I just load the Samba ROM into SRAM and run from there? If not why not?

Read this: http://www.at91.com/www/phpBB2_mirror/viewtopic.php4?t=1496

henkvisser · **Posted:** Wed Mar 08, 2006 12:02 am

I'd like to update the firmware on my device on the fly without having to power cycle or add a button to pull the TST pin high. What are some good solutions to do this?

Can't I just load the Samba ROM into SRAM and run from there? If not why not?

Thanks.

-Henk

Fredo_Boyer · **Posted:** Wed Mar 08, 2006 12:23 pm

The SAM-BA recovery procedure allows to restore in flash SAM-BA Boot (TST pin)
After a power up, the SAM-BA boot copies itself then in SRAM. So you need to have SAM-BA Boot in flash to be able to run it in SRAM. As your application will erase the SAM-BA boot, you will not be able to run it again...
So, if you want to update your firmware on your device with SAM-BA boot feature, you will need to include and adapt the SAM-BA Boot code in your application...

henkvisser wrote:

I'd like to update the firmware on my device on the fly without having to power cycle or add a button to pull the TST pin high. What are some good solutions to do this?

Can't I just load the Samba ROM into SRAM and run from there? If not why not?

Thanks.

-Henk

henkvisser · **Posted:** Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:16 pm

What?! I have no idea what you are talking about. I just load the data from ROM into RAM and run it from there. How is the Samba-boot being erased when it is stored in ROM? I think I am missing what you are saying.

Thanks for the info.

-Henk

Fredo_Boyer · **Posted:** Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:26 pm

In fact, you never load directly data from ROM to RAM !

Let me explain the differences between SAM-BA in ROM, Flash and RAM:

The ROM includes the SAM-BA Boot Recovery
The SAM-BAâ„¢ Boot Recovery restores the SAM-BA Boot in the first two sectors of the on-chip Flash memory. The SAM-BA Boot recovery is performed when the TST pin and the PA0, PA1 and PA2 pins are all tied high.

Then when SAM-BA Boot is in your flash, after a power-up, it will copy itself in RAM in order to give the possibility to program and/or erase the flash (as the flash is a single plane)
In consequence, when you will program the flash, you will erase SAM-BA Boot.

If you want to recover SAM-BA Boot, this will be possible thanks to the SAM-BA Boot recovery procedure which will copy from ROM to FLash SAM-BA...

And so on ...

Hope this is clear now

Juro · **Joined:** Tue Oct 18, 2005 6:42 pm **Posts:** 43

I think, Henk talks about code published here:
http://www.at91.com/www/phpBB2_mirror/viewtopic.php4?t=1496 It shows (undocumented) way to copy SAM-BA from ROM directly to RAM.

Fredo_Boyer · **Posted:** Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:01 pm

gerhardf wrote:

hello,
are there any plans for supporting a comandline version of SAM-BA?
Would be helpful for productino programming.

regards
gerhard

You can use the AT91Boot_TCL.dll which gives you the entry points to the AT91Boot_DLL through a TCL command line.
You just need a TCL Toolchain including tclsh which can be downloaded for example from the following URL: http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/

CAN_TCLSH gives an example of tcl script programming a SAM7X256-based board over CAN network. You will be able to adapt it easily to your needs...
Donwload the AT91ISP package ( http://www.at91.com/www/phpBB2_mirror/v ... highlight= ) and have a look on the associated documentation for all the low level init functions and the internal flash ones...

pmazolo · **Joined:** Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:05 pm **Posts:** 37

Hi,

I am new to this FLASH thing and would like some help with basic questions:

1. How do we best get the very first code into the AT91SAM7A3 in our produced units? Does the chip have some kind of built-in support for downloading code in an "empty" chip? JTAG? Other?

2. How do we download new firmware into existing products, in-field?

Our product will have a serial port (RS-232 via the USART), so could we use that for both #1 and #2 in some way? We would like to avoid having a JTAG connector on every unit produced....

Ie: Is there any way to get the "empty" chip to download firmware via the serial port? Or, if that is not possible, we could perhaps download the first code via JTAG pads in production, but then we would like to be able to use RS-232 after that, in-field.... is there a bootocode available that can handle that? At least one that we could port to the A3....

(The at91sam7A3 we use has 32K ram and 256 FLASH, but no ROM/bootrom)

/PM

Fredo_Boyer · **Posted:** Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:00 pm

Have a look at the corresponding FAQ: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/faq_c ... ontrollers

SAM-BA Boot allows you to upgrade your firmware and/or program it the first time: check in your full product datasheet the section Boot program...

bye

AT91SAM7S Boot Assistant (SAM-BA)

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