AM335x Flash Tool User's Guide

= Overview of AM335x Flash Tool =

The AM335x Flash Tool allows you to program the Secondary Program Loader (SPL), Bootloader (U-Boot), Linux Kernel(uImage) and UBIFS Root File System into external flash memory devices on an AM335x system board. This tool allows booting and flashing of TI-designed or custom AM335x systems using either the USB RNDIS (USB0) or Ethernet (EMAC1) peripheral interfaces. This tool currently supports NAND, NOR and SPI flash devices.

AM335x Flash Tool includes two (2) individually downloadable installers:

1. AM335x Flash Image Builder

AM335x Flash Image Builder is intended for use by the software engineering team to produce a flash archive file (*.tar.gz)     that can be consumed by the AM335x Flash Programmer programs (for Ubuntu Linux or for Windows 7 or later). The flash archive     file contains all necessary U-Boot/SPL restore-flash images, "payload" images (to be programmed into flash memory) and flash      configuration data (flash-programmer.conf file). This program is intended to be run along side the AM335x EZSDK Linux Software     Development Kit and it has been validated to run on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The installer is available separately from     ti.com and must be installed into the  "&lt;SDK_INSTALL_PATH&gt;/host-tools" directory of the AM335x EZSDK. For customers who do not use the "gcc" compiler within the EZSDK as part of their infrastructure it is also     possible to build your own images separately and create your own flash archive file for use by the AM335x Flash Programmer programs. AM335x Flash Image Builder User's Guide

2. AM335x Flash Programmer for Linux

AM335x Flash Programmer for Linux is intended for use in the factory production environment. It is a very simple program that opens the     flash archive file produced by the AM335x Flash Image Builder (or produced manually) and programs the payload images into flash memory. This program is intended to be run on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. It is a stand-alone program that does NOT require the AM335x     EZSDK Linux Software Development Kit to be installed. The installer is available separately from ti.com and after installation the program     resides in the "${HOME}/am335x-flash-programmer" directory of the Ubuntu Linux host PC (by default). Using this program in the     factory environment requires no compiling of images. The flash archive file is merely opened and programmed into the target system board. AM335x Flash Programmer for Ubuntu Linux User's Guide