view doc/FCDEV3B-hardware-bug @ 474:8fbf3c0ea8b6

doc: Flash-boot-mode-hack article replaced with FCDEV3B-hardware-bug
author Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org>
date Sun, 25 Mar 2018 07:07:49 +0000
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children 15c61c8f3166
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Our current FCDEV3B boards exhibit a hardware bug: the reset input to the flash
chip is connected to Calypso's FDP output per both TI's Leonardo reference
schematics and Openmoko's working design, but this arrangement turns out to be
unsuitable for the high-capacity Spansion S71PL129NC0HFW4B flash+pSRAM chip we
are using, copied from Pirelli DP-L10.  This hardware bug has manifested itself
in two different ways so far:

* Out of the 20 boards we've built so far, on just one board there was an issue
  where our standard Magnetite fw would have trouble booting from flash, but
  RAM-loaded fw booted fine.  Interrupting the boot process serially and having
  the serially loaded code jump to the image in flash also worked fine.
  Eventually it was found that the flash boot problem on that one board occurs
  only when flash boot mode 1 is used, whereas flash boot mode 0 works fine.  I
  (Mychaela) suspect that the problem has something to do with the watchdog
  reset that happens as part of flash boot mode 1, the FDP output behaviour
  during that watchdog reset, and the flash chip's reaction to the latter.

* On all of the boards there is a problem with sleep modes: when the firmware
  is running from flash as opposed to RAM, certain sleep-wake sequences cause
  an erratic self-reboot or a hang.  It is suspected (though not proven yet)
  that the FDP output goes low during all sleep modes, our Spansion flash chip
  gets unhappy with the reset timing it gets subjected to, and some flash reads
  (instruction fetches) don't work after wakeup.  So far the only workable
  solution has been to disable all sleep modes in all FCDEV3B fw builds;
  nothing else has been successful.

The fcdev3b-hacks directory contains two hacks that can be applied to FCDEV3B
firmware images (fwimage.bin builds) as xxd binary patches:

* The first hack dating from 2017-05 patches the fw to use flash boot mode 0
  instead of TI's original flash boot mode 1, but after boot the FFFF:FB10
  register is set to put the flash and not the internal ROM at address 0, so
  the interrupt and exception vectors go to the flash like in TI's original fw,
  not through the internal ROM.  This hack was put together for the purpose of
  producing flashable fw images that boot without problems on that one board on
  which flash boot mode 1 didn't work, and worked successfully for that purpose.

* The second hack dating from 2018-03 patches the fw to not only use flash boot
  mode 0, but also route the interrupt and exception vectors through Calypso's
  internal ROM.  I was hoping that this hack would make the sleep mode problem
  go away by having the Calypso execute some cycles out of its internal ROM and
  RAM before hitting the flash after wakeup, but nope, bringing up the SIM
  interface with AT+CFUN=1 in the l1reconst config when running from flash with
  small sleep enabled still triggers erratic misbehaviour even with this patch.

The proper fix will be to change the PCB to not connect the flash chip's reset
input to FDP any more, and connect it to a pull-up resistor instead.  But this
fix will require an expensive PCB respin, hence some experiments to test this
idea will need to be done first.