{TekCrack}

So as I mentioned, I attempted the flash method to update u-boot to the latest version. I got to the erase flash part of the instructions and I ended up getting a support call and had to run. Storm rolled through while I was gone and killed the power and, because it was down for more than an hour, the battery backup too. So I returned home to find a ‘dead’ NGW100 board.

Just to mention, there are three ways to perform a NGW100 U-Boot/Root FS update. They are as follows:

• Update through u-boot itself
• Update using Atmel’s flash-update program
• Update with the JTAG ICE MKII (which I will demonstrate)
• You can also update the root filesystem via SD Card, Network, Serial, or JTAG. I decided to use JTAG ICE to restore both U-Boot and the root filesystem.

For this exercise, I will be basing my walk through off of AVR Freak’s Wiki documentation. For other updating options, please refer to the Firmware Upgrade page on AVR Freak’s Wiki.

Notes

• U-Boot is stored in /dev/mtd0. Its partition is from 0×000000 - 0×01FFFF.
• Root Filesystem is stored in /dev/mtd1. Its partition is from 0×020000 - 0×7EFFFF.
• The U-Boot environment area (used for storing environmental variables for U-Boot) is located in /dev/mtd2. Its partition is from 0×7F0000 - 0×7FFFFF.
• Usr Filesystem is stored in /dev/mtd3.
• If you have an old root image. Do not worry if the system light blinks red after updating. The code in the kernel has changed to represent a cpu heartbeat and is normal.

After purchasing the JTAG ICE MKII and after setting up Ubuntu with a AVR32 development environment, I did the following to replace u-boot.

Prepare NGW100 For JTAG ICE Restore

1. Remove power to the NGW100 board.
2. Connect the JTAG ICE MKII to power and connect a USB cable between Linux and the programmer.
3. Make sure the JTAG ICE power is off. Now connect the JTAG connector to the NGW100 (I’ve included a picture above with the correct way to plug the connector into the NGW100.
4. Now power the JTAG ICE device. If you check /var/log/messages on your Linux box, you should see that your system detected the JTAG programmer.
5. Now apply power to the NGW100.
6. Go to atmel.no/buildroot/binaries and pick the latest version. I downloaded the following files from version 2.3.0: u-boot.bin and root.avr32.jffs2-root.
7. Next we restore u-boot with the JTAG ICE

Use JTAG ICE To Flash U-Boot and Root On The NGW100

1. First we erase the entire flash of the NGW100 board with sudo avr32program erase -fcfi@0 to ensure the board is clear.
2. Now we flash the u-boot image onto the NGW100 board with sudo avr32program program -F bin -vfcfi@0 u-boot.bin.
3. Now we flash the root image onto mtd1 with sudo avr32program program -F bin -vfcfi@0 -O 0×20000 root.avr32.jffs2-root.
4. All done! Unplug the power from the NGW100 and turn off the JTAG ICE MKII.
5. Disconnect the JTAG connector from the NGW100.
6. Plug in your NGW100 board and watch it fly.

Note: The first time I tried to boot the root filesystem, I got some unexpected errors. For more information check here.

That is how you use a JTAG ICE MKII to restore/upgrade/install a fresh u-boot and root image onto your Atmel NGW100 board. You can also use TFTP to load a root image or you can move on to loading the usr filesystem.

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