As I’ve been experimenting more with the new S5D9, I managed to brick and fix two boards multiple times. As the board is new, the documentation to use the board with different hardware and software is still being built up. I decided to write down my experiences so that I remember what I did and to publish my experiences in case other people have the problem.
Problems
I encountered a number of scenarios where the board wasn’t doing what I wanted.
- Board LED3 is solid red and does not mount as a USB drive
- Board LED3 is solid red and board mounts as USB drive, but I can’t load the binary
- Board LED 1, 2, 3, flashing in sequence green, yellow, red (board is ready for boot binary, but not reading in update.txt)
Solutions
Flashing Board with Factory Image
I documented the process to flash the board with the original factory image and bootloader here. The document has a link to download the most recent factory image as of 7/28/2017. The image was updated last month.
I also realized that I didn’t need to go through all the tests every time. I just needed to connect pins 1 and 2 on J11 and restore the board.
Once the board was restored, the ThingName.txt and original BugLabs (Renesas Data Monitoring) image came back up.
Loading Another Binary Before Restoring Factory Image
With one board, I was having problems getting it to work with the BugLabs (Renesas Data Monitoring) image (after I broke the board. It was working initially). I was only able to use it with Medium One (Renesas Data Intelligence).
Fortunately, I was playing around with Synergy and bricked the board when I loaded a Synergy binary onto the board using the update.txt method. When I restored the board to the factory image, I was able to see my ThingName.txt file again and the board started talking to Renesas Data Monitoring (BugLabs) again.
At this stage, I don’t know why this works. I’m sure there’s another way to do this. However, until I figure out a better solution, I decided to document my process before I forget it.
Update 7/28: I now have an updated factory image and this might resolve the problem. Also, I just learned today that I need to change the memory address, depending on if I use the bootloader or flash an .srec to the board directly with a Segger debugger.