NetDCU USB Loader

    Good afternoon,
    i saw that new nboot version was preloaded on last armstone cards we received, problem is that they seems not compatible with NetDCU USB Loader available on website.


    On previous NBoot (working one), was needed to press the u key to start USB download mode, and it worked.
    On new NBoot USB seems working with autodetect (when i connect usb cable it says that is connected at high speed) but usb is never detected on NetDCU USB Loader, button always remain red like if no device is connected.
    What can be? New NETDCU USB Loader is needed?


    Best Regards
    Miroglio Paolo

    Yes, you may need a newer version of NetDCU-USBLoader. Go to F&S website, log in and select "Support" -> "My F&S" at the top. Now you should see all the software that is available for you in section "My Project Downloads". If you see nothing, just enter the serial number of one of your boards in the section "Unlock Downloads". Then the software links should appear.


    Now go to "Tools". There you'll find the newest version of the NetDCU-USBLoader.


    Your F&S Support Team

    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.

    Dear Sirs,
    i already went to to the my f&s and put the serial number, but the same older NetDCU Usb Loader version present before is available, the 2.4.1.0.
    This version at the moment doesn't work on the new Nanoboot firmware for USB.


    Best Regards
    Miroglio Paolo

    Strange. I have a 2.4.0 here and it works.


    OK, let's have a look at the driver version. If you have the board connected, what do you have in your device manager on the PC for this USB device? I have a "FSBoardUSB Driver" and if I go to the properties of the driver, it shows me the date 06.07.2011 and version 1.0.0.16386. If you have an older version, try to deinstall the driver. In the driver subdirectory of the NetDCU USBLoader-Package there is the inf file for the new driver.


    Your F&S Support Team

    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.

    But now the LED in NetDCU USBLoader is green! Where is the problem now?

    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.

    Problem is that if i press Start the file is not transferred even if the NetDCU progress bar runs at the end.
    On the previous nboot version, when transfer was finished it wrote (press 'f' to write on flash), in this case i can press Start several times on the NetDCU
    but nothing happens on the terminal, no error or confirmation for data transfer.

    Maybe you download the wrong file? If NBoot does not detect the file type, it may be rather quiet.


    So please try the following: switch off the board, disconnect from the PC. Probably restart the PC to be sure that everything is in the correct state.


    - Start NetDCU USBLoader. Of course the LED should be red.
    - Start Terminal program
    - Now Start the board and type 's' to go into NBoot
    - Now connect the USB cable. This should show "Connected at High Speed" and the LED in NetDCU USBLoader should go green
    - In NetDCU USBLoader, select the original U-Boot file from our release (with .nb0 extension). Press Start.


    This should result in a message on the board that a U-Boot file was received. Download should happen in about 1 second.


    Your F&S Support Team

    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.

    -This problems on all boards with new nano boot, even if i restart pc. At the same time i can program correctly boards with older nanoboot firmware.
    -The .bin file is made by me and it Always worked with previous nanoboot firmware.
    -I tried loading original .bin uboot file from your distribution version 1.2 but it happens the same.
    -Please also check the download fsimx6-V2.0.tar.bz2, i cannot use the original .nb0 file because if you open the tar.gz you supplied all the files inside folder /sdcard are of 0 bytes length, other folders of the tar archive seems ok.

    The files in sdcard are only symbolic links (with slightly different names) to files in the binaries directory. So if you unpack the .tar.bz2 file on a Windows PC, it may fail to create these symbolic links. The understanding of a symbolic link in Windows is quite different to that of Linux. But the file itself is also available in the binaries directory.


    For the new NBoot you actually must download the nb0 file. It does not recognize the .bin file anymore, as the internal layout of U-Boot has slightly changed. Now it is compatible to all our other U-Boots. In fact, the source for U-Boot is now the same for almost all our boards, no matter which CPU.


    And if you created your file with an older U-Boot source, it will not work with the new system anyway. You really need to add any modifications to U-Boot again on top of the new source or add our modifications to your version. The whole Linux system now uses a completely different way of storing data in NAND flash. So if an old NBoot stores data, it will not be understood by a new U-Boot and vice versa. So you have to switch all stages (NBoot, U-Boot, Kernel and rootfs) to the new version in one go, for that they understand each other again.


    The best way of applying our modifications to your existing version is by using "git" as version control system. Then you can add you version and modifications on one branch, our new version (and any future versions) on a second branch and then you can always merge our modifications to your branch with git. And most of the merging is done automatically by git and you only have something to do if there are any conflicts.


    Your F&S Support Team

    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.

    Edited once, last by fs-support_HK ().

    Yes, with nb0 works.
    Unfortunately we cannot update firmware frequently, as our technical support needs only one way to do things or instead we need several procedures and files to load for each release period of terminals.
    What do you think to achieve this? My idea is to downgrade nano boot to older one or to ask to send to us only boards with older firmware. Please give suggestion about this matter.


    Best Regards
    Miroglio Paolo

    First of all, updating NBoot is not required very often. In most cases, you can stick with the NBoot version that was delivered with the board. So even if there are different NBoot versions on different boards, the download and update procedure usually remains the same.


    This update for fsimx6-V2.0 was a complete exception. Changing the internal layout of the NAND pages is not done on a regular basis, so this is completely unusual. But it was necessary to have a more stable NAND support. We tried to put all incompatible modifications in this one release so that a change of the whole software chain from NBoot to Buildroot is not necessary again.


    Unfortunately the older NBoot behaved rather different to our regular NBoot that we use on all our other boards (because it was implemented by someone else), so to be compatible to our other boards we had to change the user interface, too. So yes, this is a step that is incompatible to the previous version, but now we are on a stable basis and the NBoot system will remain more or less fix. We will add ehancements for security features in the future, but as long as you don't need these new features, the interface will remain the same. Therefore updating NBoot will be quite transparent. You won't notice the any other version unless you need some of the new features.


    Because of the better NAND support, I would really recommend switching to the new version wherever possible.


    Your F&S Support Team

    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.