• XTEND-G3 FLASH Corruption

Early XTEND-G3 users (prior to January 1998) have reported that their XTEND units stopped working suddenly and would not recover even when reset. Upon investigation we learned that the cause of the problem was that the FLASH memory (SST 29EE512) used on the XTEND was getting accidentally erased by the user. This likely occurred during a debug session when the user attempted a write into a region of data memory where the FLASH is mapped for overlay purposes. Since this erases the block of memory that was addressed in the FLASH device, the XMON software monitor gets corrupted and the XTEND can no longer boot up correctly.

This problem is a result of some the XTEND units not having the Software Protection feature programmed in the 29EE512 FLASH devices at the time the XTEND kit was manufactured. Most of these units were updated before shipment and have been reprogrammed with the FLASH protection feature enabled. However, we believe that some units may have been shipped without this Software Protection feature enabled.

So far this has only been reported in very few cases. In each case, the customer has been able to reprogram the FLASH using the XMON hex file that is included in the XTEND development kit. The file is also available from this web site.

For customers who do not have FLASH programming capability, FDI is offering to reprogram the FLASH parts free of charge.