Thank you...my mistake.
we are currently using using Armstone A9 for our company production and i saw connections of new board are same.
I received new Armstone MX8M, when connected to power, all leds are turned off and no output from serial port.
At least i expected some led turned on and some nboot/uboot activity on serial but card looks dead.
What i have to do? Do i contact Rutronik or you?
I already checked, i downloaded the fsimx8m-B2020.01-pre.tar.bz2
But no document available on list...do you need some screenshot?
Good morning,
it is several years we are using in our company Armtone A9.
We received some days ago from Rutronik the Armtone MX8M, the link on the forum to the hardware connection is not working.
Is the power connection same than Armstone A9? Is it supplied with some software/nboot?
Best Regards
Ok from this replies i assume you don't understand what i am saying or giving just political reply, don't worry anymore about this.
PS: We cannot use newer distro or yocto as we made porting for dosbox, mysql, and other functions for the board.
If you could help me about this matter at least:
With your distro fsimx6 2.1, is fw_printenv fw_setenv working together with uboot or is not compatible? In older versions everything was working but with fsimx6 from 2.0, i think there is an incompatiblity on the BBT handling of nand flash between uboot and kernel, do you have some information/experience about that?
Best Regards
1) i can't use mtd-utils and fw_printenv/setenv anymore because now uboot flash structure is changed, was base on previous uboot version you given
2) because you changed 2 or 3 times the uboot versions, if everything remained with same and old uboot version it would be not needed
QuoteYou say that you needed only very little equipment to update BIOS. Well, a full operating system, a diskette or pen-drive, a keyboard and a screen is looking as quite a lot of equipment to me. You happen to have some of this equipment already available by your device. But imagine some PC-like device that is controlling a traffic light in a cabinet next to the street near the street crossing, there is also no screen and no keyboard and the service technician has to bring all this along. So the difference is not very big compared to a notebook that you have to bring along and connect to a serial port.
On all our terminals are given with a display and a touch screen, as all normal PLC panels or Scada HMI with USB port. But not all technicians having intervention have a computer, and in this case with the proper software normally would be needed just a pendrive. So no, it is not easier to use TTY 
Ps: we are not coming from a PC-like environment with a screen, but we are using these board because have lvds support and these kind of boards are made for screen and multimedia.
Normally all the firmware not related to a display we made internally with M4 microprocessor in C or a Infineon in Assembler, but this is not the point.
By ending, just to explain our point: We have all these issues because sometimes when you supply boards the uboot version changes, all our firmware was made for the first uboot version.
1) We use mtd-utils together with the tools called fw_printenv (and fw_setenv), to set uboot parameters from userspace. This is needed because on same terminal we use different displays (lvds 7", 12", 15") so it can be configured at any moment, like other parameters
2) We cannot give to our technicians another board, because the technician is in another country and sometime is very expensive and takes very long to ship boards (we must act in the fastest way sometimes)
3) You are comparing differences between differences architectures and systems (BIOS and UEFI) here we have a problem with the same board and microprocessor.
Now I try to explain the differences between the previous embedded systems compared to this one:
Remote past: Yes bios does not update itself, but was just needed a floppy disk (Bootable) with a .exe file (supplied from manufacturer) with the .bin image that would load on BIOS. Also, it was possible to change parameters from screen directly, without any firmware change.
Near past: In latest systems, USB-HDD option was available, so technician just had to insert a pendrive (yes, that was a bootable system made by me) restart the computer and automatic install procedure would run.
Please understand that the difference is that not much equipment was needed, and even a mechanical technician could perform that.
With this board i don't have a way to correct the situation in the same way, a serial port converter is needed and a usb cable with a tty utility. That could be possible, but it is impossible us to make do these kind of operations to our technicians because are too much complex.
But i don't expect anything from this tech support, it is just a complain and a suggestion at the same time, for me is still crazy that i need a tty terminal with a computer to change a boot parameter or update uboot, expecially by having a display. on the board..
When i will have time i will try to make a customized uboot version with display support, at least to change some parameter directly from the display or worst case HDMI screen.
Times ago i tried Advantech boards and they have at least that, i will try to make customization from newer uboot myself.
Anyway, i thank you for the kind reply.
Best Regards
Unfortunately your answer is useless and there is no solution for us...
Problem 1) Some of our technicians only have Windows 10, and some versions of nboot on some cards does not permit to load uboot with serial...
Problem 2) U-boot changed from version to version, there is a way to read and write parameters of different u-boot versions with mtd utils? I think not...
MAIN Problem) We are not asking about newer versions with many options or older versions with less options...we just need a "decent" way to load firmware on boards on different periods...on many systems is very easy. But now for older boards is a real mess because we have no way to update on field in a reasonable way.
This is a real shame, as even in 1982 was possible to load BIOS (equivalent of UBOOT) with a floppy disk on most motherboards, today in 2017 we are unable to let an our technician upgrade a firmware on site and we will need to send back cards in factory to do that.
I kindly ask again: there is a simple way to upgrade firmware with USB with Windows 10? We are in 2017 and as working with multiple cards around the world we cannot give that kind of assistance and it is not our fault if you previously supplied bugged code or now making different uncompatible software versions that are not easy to upgrade.
I think we are not asking much, but as this is the situation we will look after for another board productor that will give a more professional and reliable upgrade system.
With fsimx6 release 1.2, u-boot fw_printenv was working.
Now with newer ifsmx6 releases (i configure mtdparts, ifsmx6 headers, etc) seems to not work anymore.
This is very important for us to write u-boot parameters from userspace, did somebody have some information/used it properly in recent versions?
The only thing i can assure is that mtd-utils is working fine and flash data can be dumped correctly, but i think some bug on fw_printenv tool is occuring.
I cannot at the moment, as that board was in a customer factory and now i am back in office.
Our problem is: we have hundreds of these boards around the world and various technicians are making assistance to that with not much computer expertise or equipment.
So for us is just a mess to do that, we cannot change firmware every 3 months...we have boards with different firmware, and as you declared some of them does not have "Decent functionality" in case we will need to reprogram on field.
Never went to nano boot menu, at the time we started using your boards, F&S replied that we should not change it, so we just put the uboot but nboot given by you is unchanged.
Also uboot and operative system was customized by us at that time, so it is difficult for us to move to new uboot / operative system.
Is it possible to load a new nboot without changing behaviour of old uboot/os?
Please select action
'd' -> Serial download of bootloader
'u' -> USB download Eboot/UBoot
'E' -> Erase flash
'B' -> Show bad blocks
Use NetDCUUsbLoader for USB download
USB download ..
ERR: UNKNOWN SETUP Packet Type
Setup Info: 0 , 0<<< ---- ERR: UNKNOWN SETUP Packet Type
Setup Info: 0 , 0<<< ---- ERR: UNKNOWN SETUP Packet Type
Setup Info: 0 , 0<<< ---- ERR: UNKNOWN SETUP Packet Type
Setup Info: 0 , 0<<< ----
I also moved to Windows 10 recently, i disabled from UEFI the digital signature checking for drivers.
The driver present with the NetDCU loader is not working when USB download is activated from Tera Term.
If i try to make Windows decide for the proper driver, no driver is found and remain a unrecognized device.
If i force the driver on the device, the diagnostic on windows driver property is as following, (translated in english)
"Unable to load the device (Code 10).
USB Address request set failed"
So i tried to use the serial boot (that for me never worked also before), if i send the .nb0 using teraterm (problems also with dcuterm), it starts going crazy, showing the same "Please select action" header during program time.
Below some log (everytime is different), but serial connection is fine.
Do you have some reliable guide to permit Windows 10 users to properly load u-boot? Also because we are all changing computer and older Windows are no more available.
Check below some crazy report also from serial loading:
Please select action
'd' -> Serial download of bootloader
'u' -> USB download Eboot/UBoot
'E' -> Erase flash
'B' -> Show bad blocks
Use NetDCUUsbLoader for USB download
start to download ...
#####################################################################################################file len=104122
'f' -> Save image to flash
Please select action
'd' -> Serial download of bootloader
'u' -> USB download Eboot/UBoot
'E' -> Erase flash
'B' -> Show bad blocks
Use NetDCUUsbLoader for USB download
There is no data for download into Nandflash
Please select action
'd' -> Serial download of bootloader
'u' -> USB download Eboot/UBoot
'E' -> Erase flash
'B' -> Show bad blocks
Use NetDCUUsbLoader for USB download
................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Done
Please select action
'd' -> Serial download of bootloader
'u' -> USB download Eboot/UBoot
'E' -> Erase flash
'B' -> Show bad blocks
Use NetDCUUsbLoader for USB download
start to download ...
#####################################################################file len=70990
'f' -> Save image to flash
Good Day,
it is several years we are working with your cards for our production.
But soon we will start using network interfacing...i can see all cards have same mac address.
How can this is possible? If so i think maybe is stored in some area of the filesystem and when we load our standard software is overwritten?
Please indicate how to properly handle MAC Address on our terminals, configuration and (eventually) to be set manually.
Best Regards
Miroglio Paolo
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
-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.
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.
Please check the picture attached, firmware version is fine, i also tried to reinstall driver from the netdcu folder but
problem persists, i tried this also in other boards and problem is the same.
Operative system is Windows 7 64bit.
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
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
This document you sent seems what i needed! I will check and advice.
Best Regards
Miroglio Paolo
