Serial Upload

[Pursuit20]

Hi Mark,
In your bootload documentation, it talks about having the ability to serially upload a new image. In my application, I do not have Ethernet capability.  I need a way to connect to Uart 0 and upload a new image through the serial port.  Is that what you were refering to?  I don't have External SPI Flash but I do have IIC EEPROM.  I was wondering if there was a way to send the image serially to the IIC EEPROM and then have it read the new image from there and upload on the next reset. I understand that I will have to write the IIC part for the external memory but I was wondering if the Serial Loader described below was documented or sampled somewhere?

?Tasker boot-loader strategies
The ?Tasker boot-loader strategy can be configured depending on the project requirements.
The following options are possible:
· TFTP upload support integrated in the boot loader (Ethernet, ARP and UDP)
· Serial loader support integrated in the boot loader
· Override options to force serial or TFTP uploads (eg. Input port state at reset)
· Override of IP configuration option (eg. Input port state at reset) to enable a board
with unknown configuration to be contactable via Ethernet – useful mainly together
with TFTP support
· ?Tasker “bare-minimum” loader

Thanks for your help,

[mark]

Hi

I have to admit that I have completely forgotten this extract from the boot loader document. It was a part of the original idea but only the Ethernet boot loader was actually implemented. There will also be a USB boot loader shortly (for the devices with USB).

Concentrating on UART loading, there are 2 main strategies. The first is to load the new code to free FLASH (or external FLASH / EEPROM), reboot and let the "Bare-minimum-boot-loader" do its standard job. This is supported for internal and external SPI FLASH but not EEPROM. It means that the download support has to be added to the application.

The second strategy - the one that actually makes most sense for UART loading is to add the loader directly to the boot loader code. This certainly makes the code a few kBytes larger but it can then load directly to the SW code location. The serial loader can be activated if no valid code is found and also if a certain input is in a defined state.

The fact is that both of the 2 methods above have been used in some projects together with UART (S-REC download) but these are not presently integrated in the uTasker project/boot loader.

Therefore I am sorry to disappoint at the moment. If you need some example code to do this please contact me by email/personal message.

Regards

Mark

[pflannery]

Hello Mark,

I wrote to you a while back about using the uTasker boot for a mcf5213 project. The project was delayed for various reasons and I'm now getting back to it. The main task that I have left is the bootloader. I too am using the serial port to install new software upgrades.

Would it be possible to get the example code you referred to?

Thanks in advance,
Pat

[mark]

Hi Pat

I have sent you a file at your email address.

Good luck

regards

Mark