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Flashing APUx with Raspberry Pi

Preparing environment and building image

Details about building firmware are mentioned in README

Flashing APUx using RPi2/3/zero

If You have already built an image with descriptions provided earlier, it is time to connect RPi to apu.

  1. Prepare wire connections.

    pinout:

    Signal RPi Pin number APUx SPI pin header
    3V power 17 1 VCC (may be omitted)
    GND 20 2 GND
    SPI0 CS0 24 3 SPICS
    SPI0 CLK 23 4 SPICLK
    SPI0 MISO 21 5 SPIDI
    SPI0 MOSI 19 6 SPIDO

    Except that before flashing we have to make sure that APUx is on and in S5 state. That means we have to connect pins 2 and 3 on J2 header before turning power on. In such case there will be no output on serial port.

  2. Configure SPI and SSH on RPi.

On RPi side we can use other pins as well. There are 2xSPI, 2x3V power and 8xGND. Note that SPI requires dtoverlay=spi1-1cs in /boot/config.txt:

  • I have Raspbian on SD card, I need additional customizations:
  • if /dev/spidev0.0 doesn't exist, set dtparam=spi=on in boot/config.txt, reboot.
  • I want to connect via WiFi/SSH. So I place config wpa_supplicant.conf /boot/ (/etc/wpa_supplicant/ should work as well).
  • enable SSH on boot (in /etc/rc.local):
    /etc/init.d/ssh start
  • To figure out RPi's IP address I use:
    ~/img> sudo nmap -sP 192.168.0.255/24

    [...]
    Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.16
    Host is up (0.17s latency).
    MAC Address: B8:27:EB:24:81:58 (Raspberry Pi Foundation)
    [...]

Be carefull, you may need to adjust IP address mask!

  • I can login on pi user (default password: raspberry), which has sudo priviledges:
    ssh pi@192.168.0.16
  • install flashrom
    pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo apt-get install flashrom
  • read ROM image:

##### APU1 

    pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=16000 -r apu.rom -c "MX25L1605A/MX25L1606E/MX25L1608E"

##### APU2/3/4/5:

    pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=16000 -r apu.rom
3. Connecting via serial port:

  • RS232 connection - according to the image (TX & RX crossed)

RS232 connection

Terminal command:

sudo screen -L /dev/ttyUSB0 115200,-cstopb