Flashing your dev system with nuon-flash
VM
Labs SDK Internal Release 0.86.2
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nuon-flash is a GUI based utility that can simplify flashing your dev system. It is especially useful if you need to switch frequently between the flash images shipped with the SDK and a component that you are currently developing. The current version of nuon-flash, 0.05, is a Beta version. Most functions are stable and reliable, but there may still be some rough edges in the operation or interface.
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Because nuon-flash is still under development, the windows and text displayed when you use the tool may vary from those shown in this document. As well, the screen captures shown here may not be 100% stylistically consistent with each other.
After installing the SDK, you can invoke nuon-flash from any command prompt under Windows or Linux by simply typing nuon-flash.
nuon-flash requires tcl/tk version 8.1 or later. This should not be a problem on Linux systems.
Under Windows, you must have the tk's wish program installed in C:\Program Files\tcl\bin\. You are required to have either the 8.1 version (wish81.exe) or the 8.3 version (wish83.exe) in this directory.
nuon-flash's interface window consists of 3 main panels:
The option selections control what nuon-flash will do to your dev system.
The control buttons invoke the various functions of nuon-flash.
The feeback area tells you what nuon-flash is up to.
The option selections are in the upper panel of the nuon-flash interface. They control:
The first four rows of options control the software configuration. Options are available for developer download, system hardware configuration, video output configuration, and GUI.
Developer: selecting the Yes option for the configuration will download software that boots to the developer GUI. If you select No for this option, the downloaded software will boot directly to the player. This option defaults to Yes.
System: Select the option corresponding to your hardware: Clear case (aka "heavy metal"), White box (typical dev system, the one in a modified PC desktop case), or Rev 6. Note that only rev 5 development systems are supported with this release of nuon-flash; the rev 6 hardware is not supported in this release, and the option cannot be selected. This option defaults to White box.
Video: If you select NTSC, nuon-flash will download firmware to support NTSC output, and configure your dev system settings appropriately. If you select PAL, nuon-flash will download firmware to support PAL video output, and configure your dev system settings appropriately. This option defaults to NTSC.
GUI: The only supported GUI at this time is the "Euro" GUI. This option defaults to Euro - no selection is currently possible for this option.
The Components: option determines which firmware components will be loaded into your dev system by nuon-flash when you push the Flash button. Selecting a component causes it to be loaded; deselecting the component means it will not be loaded. Available components are
By default, all the components are selected.
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The first thing nuon-flash does when flashing your dev system is issue a reset command (mload -!). If you select the Pause to let me switch the ROM/Flash jumper option, nuon-flash will display a dialog window and suspend the flashing process until you click OK. This option is for when you accidentally flash an invalid boot image into the system, and need to restore boot image. |
The image shown may vary from the appearance
on your system.
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By default, nuon-flash looks in the directory indicated by your VMLABS environment variable for the files to be downloaded. If you select the Search VMLABS_LOCAL for files option, nuon-flash will first look for these files in the directory indicated by the VMLABS_LOCAL environment variable. If it does not find the files it needs there, it will then look in the directory indicated by VMLABS.
This option is unselected by default.
Note that if you do not have the VMLABS_LOCAL environment variable defined, you will not be able to select this option.
There are four control buttons for nuon-flash: Reset, Flash, Defaults, and Quit.
Pushing the Reset button causes nuon-flash to issue a reset command (mload -!) to your dev system.
Pushing the Flash button initiates the process of flashing your dev system. nuon-flash will search for the component files required by your selected configuration options. It will then display a confirmation window, describing the components to be installed (along with other possible configuration options).
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After reviewing the information, you may:
or
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The window you see will vary from this one depending on your operating system and the options/components you have selected to flash. |
If you choose to proceed with the flash process, nuon-flash will next reset your dev system. If you have selected the Pause to let me switch the ROM/Flash jumper option, the process will be paused at this point (see above).
nuon-flash will then proceed to download the flashRcv application to your dev system, and then pass flashRcv the files to be installed. Progress of the download and flash process is tracked both in the nuon-flash message area and on the monitor attached to your dev system.
When the process is complete, Done. is displayed in the message area.
During the flash process, the control buttons are disabled. This is to prevent inadvertant corruption of the flash image, such as might happen if you exited nuon-flash or reset the dev system in the middle of the flash process. Once the flash process is complete, the control buttons are re-enabled.
Pushing the Defaults button causes nuon-flash to reset all the options to their default values.
Pushing the Quit button will exit nuon-flash.
The Message Area is where nuon-flash displays feedback about the flash process. Normally, messages are displayed on a grey background. Error and warning messages are displayed on bright yellow and pale yellow backgrounds, respectively.
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Normal message. |
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Error message. |
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Warning message. |
Note that the exact appearance of the message area may vary slightly from the images shown, depending on your OS and workstation configuration.
Please email comments or questions to SDK-Release@vmlabs.com
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