2.12.1 Erasing SPI NOR Flash Contents

The AM3359 ICEv2 development board from Texas Instruments comes pre-loaded with a default application in the on-board SPI flash device. To boot Linux from the microSD card, you must clear the SPI flash so that the boot process falls back to microSD card boot mode. The following steps clear the SPI flash.

  1. Make sure pins 1 and 2 of Jumper J5 (sysboot) are connected on the board

  2. Make sure that USB cable is connected from the AM3359 ICEv2 board to your host development machine

  3. Launch Code Composer Studio (CCS)

  4. Create a target configuration file in CCS to connect to the AM3359 ICEv2 board:

    • Click File → New → Target Configuration File

    • Filename: AM3359-ice-v2.ccxml. Check Use shared location to be available to anyone who uses the workspace. Click Finish. A window opens up which is to configure the connection details

      • Connection: Texas Instruments XDS100v2 USB Debug Probe

      • Device: ICE_AM3359

      • Click “Save”

  5. Launch your AM3359 ICEv2 Target Configuration:

    • Click Window → Show View → Target Configurations

    • Right click on the AM3359-ice-v2.ccxml file and the click Launch Selected Configuration

    • This should switch your current perspective to the CCS Debug perspective. If it doesn’t, click View → Debug to get to the CCS Debug perspective

  6. Connect the debugger to the CortexA8 core:

    • Right click on Texas Instruments XDS100v2 USB Debug Probe_0/CortxA8 listed in the Debug view and select Connect Target.

  7. Load the SPI flash programmer into the CortexA8 core:

    • Download the SPI flash programmer and unzip it: Isdk_spi_flasher.zip

    • Highlight the Texas Instruments XDS100v2 USB Debug Probe_0/CortexA8 by clicking on it

    • Click Run → Load → Load Program

    • Browse to the isdk_spi_flasher.out file (that you just downloaded and unzipped) and click OK

  8. Run the SPI flash programmer on the CortexA8:

    • Highlight the Texas Instruments XDS100v2 USB Debug Probe_0/CortexA8 by clicking on it

    • Click Run → Resume

  9. At this point the SPI flash programmer is running on the CortexA8 and we just need to follow the prompts to clear the flash:

    • If it isn’t opened already, open the Console view by clicking Window → Show View → Console

    • The program will give you the following prompts, type the responses and press ENTER:

      Enter Operation [1 - Flash] [2 - Erase]: 2
Enter the offset [in Hex]: 0
Enter size to be erased in Kilo bytes: 64