diff options
| author | laforge <laforge@6dc7ffe9-61d6-0310-9af1-9938baff3ed1> | 2006-10-16 16:37:59 +0000 |
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| committer | laforge <laforge@6dc7ffe9-61d6-0310-9af1-9938baff3ed1> | 2006-10-16 16:37:59 +0000 |
| commit | ea1423e7c9aa7da9e1017d71d8887a0b736db81e (patch) | |
| tree | 1471cc5fa542be35472f32249aecf879caed0c01 /doc/common-hostsoftware.xml | |
| parent | 1d505fbf35d1f9926c065402c5bd056e34df84b7 (diff) | |
add some bits and pieces of documentation
git-svn-id: https://svn.openpcd.org:2342/trunk@272 6dc7ffe9-61d6-0310-9af1-9938baff3ed1
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/common-hostsoftware.xml')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/common-hostsoftware.xml | 44 |
1 files changed, 44 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/common-hostsoftware.xml b/doc/common-hostsoftware.xml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e35a598 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/common-hostsoftware.xml @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +<section>Device Firmware Upgrade</section> +<para> +Since the device firmware is Free Software licensed under GNU GPL, +we encourage and enable users to enhance and adapt the firmware according to +their needs. In order to really benefit from this freedom, we have embedded +an easy mechanism to update the device firmware without any special tools / +adapters / cables / programmers or the like. +</para> +<para> +The OpenPICC implements the USB Device Firmware Upgrade speficication, +as released by the USB Association. Using this protocol, it is possible to +update the device firmware via special-purpose USB control requests. +</para> +<para> +A software implementation of the USB DFU host side was already available for +Linux under the name of "dfu-programmer". However, this program did not +implement the true standard, but some vendor-specific dialect of it. +Therefore, dfu-programmer has been enhanced to have full native support +for standard DFU. +</para> +</section> <!-- DFU --> + +<section>Emergency Firmware Flash</section> +<para> +The AT91SAM7 microcontroller used in the device contains a USB flash loader +(called SAM-BA) in read-only memory. By setting a jumper on the PCB and +powering up the device for 20 seconds, this loader can be copied into the +first 8kb of flash memory, overwriting the existing content. +</para> +<para> +So if the DFU loader has become inoperable, e.g. because of bugs in +experimental DFU modifications, SAM-BA can be employed to rescue the system. +</para> +<para> +Apart from proprietary Windows software by Atmel, there's the Free Software +sam7utils project which provides a host program called 'sam7' to interface +with SAM-BA and facilitate a full-flash rewrite with DFU and the device firmware. +</para> +<para> +For more information on the flash procedure, we refer to the AT91SAM7 product +documentation, as well as the sam7utils documentation. +</para> +</section> <!-- SAM-BA --> + |