I have 2 nearly identical development kits from HOLT. They both use a common HOLT main card, with a AT91SAM7564 connected to the USB as a J-LINK OB that then connects to the JTAG lines for a ATSAM3U4E microcontroller. One is a year or so newer than the other, and they have different daughter cards, but the main card is the same.

It has been over a year since I used either, and I recently got a new PC. Not having a current license for one of the mainstream toolsets, and not having authorization to order one, I installed Atmel Studio7, figuring that it would do for now. I plugged one of the HOLT boards in, connected the USB between my PC and the board, and configured the debugger to connect to the card. The J-Link control panel applet appeared and gave me a notice that the J-Link firmware was out of date an strongly recommended that I upgrade it. I did, and after I did, I can no longer use it; it claims that the J-Link on the board is only for devices made by Renesas, thus cannot be used with an ATSAM3U4E, and suggests that I go out and buy a "full J-Link". I have attached a screen-shot of the dialog as "jlink-wrong-target.png". There is a sticker on the J-Link OB with the Segger logo and a serial number. The serial number on the sticker is not quite the same as what the dialog displays. This board worked fine until I updated the firmware. I don't know how to convince the chip that it's licensed for the board it's on. I spoke to HOLT and they beleive that it's not possible to change the on-chip firmware over the USB, but it seems to have happened anyway. (The serial number has been blurred out.)


The other (newer) board has the same configuration so far as the J-Link OB and ATSAM3U4E goes; I plugged that in, and the J-Link driver did not offer to update the firmware and works just fine with it. Oddly, that J-Link OB chip doesn't have a serial number sticker on it. The attached image "jlink-cp-normal.png" shows the J-Link Control Panel dialog for that one.


While it's true that I can use the newer board, the older board has been rendered nearly useless unless I get an external JTAG programmer and close a solder bridge on the board to bypass the on-board debugger.

Has anyone else here ever run into this problem, and if so, is there a good way to convince the J-Link that it is on the correct card? Any advice would be appreciated.

Niklas:

Thanks for your response.

I installed the latest J-Link Software & Documentation Pack (V6.20h), did a replace firmware on the J-Link OG on the HOLT development board using the J-Link Configurator, but ended up with the same firmware, I think. I get the same dialog when attempting to connect to the board that I did previously. I'm not sure how the configurator chooses what flavor of firmware to load; is the supported target hard-wired in the firmware, or is it determined by some information embedded in the device NVM along with the serial number when the host debugger chip is pre-programmed during the manufacture of the board?

Thanks,
Daniel

Nino:

Thank you for your response.

The error dialog now shows V6.20h instead of V6.18a, otherwsie it's the same dialog. I've attached the screenshot of J-Link Commander when connected to the board in question. I've not figured out how to ask the J-Link debugger what target it expects from J-Link Commander, or I'd have included that output as well.

Interestingly, I get nearly the same output when I connect the other HOLT development board I have except the serial number shown is different. Same firmware compile date and time. It seems that the J-Link ARM-OB SAM7 device on the first board (the one that won't connect to the ATSAM3U4E MCU) somehow got its target identifier changed.

Thanks,
Daniel

Nino:

Here's the screen shots you asked for. First, the non-working board -- I plugged the board in, started J-Link Commander, and got a window with the connecting information followed by a "J-Link>" prompt, as seen in "j-link-commander-connect-board1-window.png" (attached).


I then typed the following at the prompts:

At this point I got the dialog captured as "j-link-commander-connect-board1-info-dialog.png", attached:

I then typed the following commands to successive "J-Link>" prompts:

"
I took the snapshot of the J-Link Commander window at this point and typed exit to close the window.

I unplugged the first board, conencted the second board, started a new "J-Link Commander" session, and performed the same steps. I did not get the info dialog. The window screen shot, "j-link-commander-connect-board2-window.png" is attached:



Did I miss anything?

Thanks,
Daniel

Nino:

I ran J-Link commander and used the command "exec invalidatefw" at the "J-Link>" command prompt. The following dialog appeared:




I clicked on "yes", and it reprogrammed and rebooted the J-Link OE. I tried to connect again with the same results as before, still thinking that it only works with Renesas targets. I exited J-Link commander, power-cycled the board, opened J-Link Configurator and saw the following:


I selected the emulator by checking the box on the left of its listing and pressed the "Update firmware of selected emulators". A confirmation dialog came up:


I told it to go ahead, and a progress dialog (sorry, I could not capture it) came up, then went away, leaving J-Link Configurator looking like:



I exited J-Link configurator, started J-Link Commander, and found no difference from my previous post. I won't recap that, as it's available and there is no change.

I went through the whole sequence with invalidating the firmware in J-Link Commander but selecting "No" to loading latest firmware, but that didn't even invalidate the firmware (J-Link Configurator did not show the "invalidated" at the end of the firmware version on the emulator line). I've actually gone through this all a few times with various changes, but none have changed the end result. I don't know if finding a different firmware version would make a difference, as it seems to me that there must be some data in the AT91SAM7564 NVM that tells the firmware what targets its supposed to support (also the J-Link OE serial number), and that that has been somehow corrupted. The serial number shown by J-Link Commander (302113793) does not match the number on the sticker on the J-Link OE chip (302113787), though it's close. It's not a simple bit-flip, and it the difference in the serial number spans 2 bytes (assuming it's stored as a 32-bit unsigned binary value), so either something overwrote some bytes someplace or the sticker was off by 6 due to some error at the factory.

The manufacturer of the board (Holt IC) tells me that it's not possible to reprogram the firmware in the AT91SAM7564 without removing it from the board and that the chips are programmed before they're installed. Their suggestion is to install an earlier J-Link driver on my PC. It is clear that the firmware can be reprogrammed. I fear there is a write-once byte someplace in the part that has somehow been corrupted, and that the change from Atmel to Renesas target device support cannot be fixed, but that's entirely speculation on my part.

Thanks,
Daniel