Issues with i.MXRT1062 and IS25WX256 Octal flash

[robvos]

Good day,

We are developing a product that uses the MIMXRT1062DVL6B together with IS25WX256-JHLE flash. It is a custom board, but we have verified that booting from flash is working with a basic LED blinking firmware, flashed via USB with NXP MCU BootUtility v6.2.0.

We set the Device Model to "ISSI_OctalSPI_IS25LXxxx_IS25WXxxx", and only change the frequency 30 MHz.

Now that we continued development we encountered two separate problems:

1: The ROM bootloader refuses to boot an image larger than 128KiB

Firmware smaller than 128K boots without a problem, but anything larger and the firmware does not boot (attaching debugger shows only code from ROM area is running).

We rule out other issues by making a simple change:

We patch the "length" field in boot_data to a number below 128K:

boot_data at 0x60001020
uint32_t start
uint32_t length <-- Only patched this from 200K to 30K!
uint32_t plugin

Then, the firmware boots up without issue, even though it actually is larger! Areas above 128K in the flash are accessible by the firmware without a problem.

So now we can boot larger images, but it feels like a bad hack. What's the problem?

2: Flashing via J-Link does not work

Being able to use J-Link and Ozone debugger for flashing would greatly help with development.

How do we get this working smoothly?

We have tried the builtin-in flashloader from SEGGER as well as RT-UFL.
I have described the issue here in more detail: https://github.com/JayHeng/RT-UFL/issues/16

[Sam_Gao]

Hi @robvos 

Q1. It's strange for this case, it should be workable based on the hardware. Would you please try use MCUXpresso to double check if it is work? 

BTW, "We set the Device Model to "ISSI_OctalSPI_IS25LXxxx_IS25WXxxx", and only change the frequency 30 MHz." How to change and what's the meaning?

B.R

Sam

[robvos]

BTW, "We set the Device Model to "ISSI_OctalSPI_IS25LXxxx_IS25WXxxx", and only change the frequency 30 MHz." How to change and what's the meaning?

This is what I configure in the NXP MCU Boot Utility.

Would you please try use MCUXpresso to double check if it is work? 

Flashing via MCUXpresso does not work. Using the "GUI Flash Tool" button results in an error:

[Masmiseim]

Hallo @robvos 

We have a design with IS25WX064 which is working okay.

Regarding 2):

The Segger Flash loader does not support Octa-SPI Flash-Memory. Some IDEs use own flash-loaders which may support octa-spi (also via Segger J-Link). We also used an adapted flash-loader.

Regards

[robvos]

Hi Masmiseim,

Which flash loader are you using?