Booting LPC-Link

lpcware-support — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:20:38 GMT

Normally, LPC-Link is booted automatically when starting a debug session via the LPCXpresso IDE.

However, under certain circumstances - such as when using the command line flash utility, you may need to boot it manually.

Background

When powered on, LPC-Link hardware makes use of the DFU mechanism (Device Firmware Update) to allow the host to download driver code into on-board RAM. This scheme offers great flexibility and ensures that the latest compatible firmware will be used for a given version of LPCXpresso IDE.

Before boot, LPC-Link appears as a USB device with details:

VendorID/ProductID: 0x0471/0xDF55 (Philips Consumer Lifestyle BV)

and will appear in Windows -> Devices and Printers, as below:

After boot, LPC-Link will appear as a USB device with details:

VendorID/ProductID: 0x1FC9/0x0009 (NXP Semiconductors)

Note: LPC-Link may be booted as a winusb device having a ProductID of 0x9 (as above) or a HID device having a ProductID of 0x7.

and will appear in Windows -> Devices and Printers as below:

Note: the standard utilities to explore USB devices on our supported host platforms are:

Windows - Device Manager
- LPCXpressoIDE also provides a listusb utility in:
  - <install_dir>\lpcxpresso\bin\Scripts
Linux - terminal command: lsusb
Mac OSX - terminal command: system_profiler SPUSBDataType

The procedure to manually boot the probes for our supported host operating systems shown below.

Using the Command Line

From LPCXpresso IDE version 7.3x and later, a boot script is supplied for all supported platforms. To make use of this script:

cd <install_dir>\lpcxpresso\bin and run
boot_link1

For versions of LPCXpresso IDE prior to 7.3

Windows

On Windows, we provide a script to perform this operation.

cd <install_dir>\lpcxpresso\bin\Scripts, and run
bootLPCXpresso.cmd type
- where
  - type = winusb for Windows 8.x / XP, or
  - type = hid for Windows Vista / 7

Note: if you don't specify a type, the script will try to load to appropriate code for your host OS.

Linux/Mac OS X

Here we need to locate the dfu-util utility and pass the parameters for the device and code etc.

cd <install_dir>/lpcxpresso/bin, and run
dfu-util -d 0x471:0xdf55 -c 0 -t 2048 -R -D LPCXpressoWIN.enc

Using the GUI

It is also possible to manually boot LPC-Link from the GUI, on occasion this may be a more convenient solution than using the command line.

To do this, locate the red Boot icon on the Toolbar:

Select the probe and click 'OK'.

Troubleshooting

If you have been able to use LPC-Link in a debug session but now see issues such as "No compatible emulator available" or "Priority 0 connection to this core already taken" when trying to perform a debug operation ...

ensure you have shut down any previous debug session
- You must close a debug session (press the Red 'terminate' button) before starting another debug session
It is possible that the debug driver is still running in the background. Use the task manager or equivalent to kill any tasks called:
- crt_emu_*
- arm-none-eabi_gdb*

If your host has never worked with LPC-Link, first perform some basic checks with reference to the background information at the beginning of this FAQ.

Try a different USB cable!
Try a different USB port. If your host has USB3 and USB2, then try a USB2 port
- there are know issues with motherboard USB3 firmware, ensure your host is using the latest driver from the manufacturer
  - Note: this is not referencing the host OS driver but the motherboard firmware of the USB port
If using a USB hub, first try a direct connection to the host computer
If using a USB hub, try using one with a separate power supply - rather than relying on the supply over USB from your PC.
Try completely removing and re-installing the host device driver
If using Windows 8.1, then sometimes the Windows USB power settings can cause problems. For more details use your favourite search engine to search for "windows 8 usb power settings" or similar. For example:
- http://wind8apps.com/windows-8-1-usb-3-0/