PK70 Erase Flash

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dboles
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Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:38 am

PK70 Erase Flash

Post by dboles »

I'm hoping someone can point me to some documentation, procedure or forum post that addresses how to securely erase the on-chip flash for the PK70 Development Kit. Thanks in advance!
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TomNB
Posts: 538
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 8:22 am

Re: PK70 Erase Flash

Post by TomNB »

How much of the flash do you need to erase? You can't erase all of it, or the device will no longer function.

Can you clarify exactly what your mean by securely erase?
dboles
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:38 am

Re: PK70 Erase Flash

Post by dboles »

Basically the Application portion of the Flash, not the bootstrap portion of the firmware.

The device resides in a secure space and any device that has any Non-Volatile Memory must undergo "approved" sanitization once it leaves the space. Some vendors provided written procedures in place for this that we submit, but as an engineer, I can sign off that it was erased, but I can't find anything in the documentation that addresses how to erase any portion of the flash, just overwrite it with another application.
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TomNB
Posts: 538
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 8:22 am

Re: PK70 Erase Flash

Post by TomNB »

Hello,

That can be done, but there are not any docs on how to do it that I know of. If you can open a support ticket engineering can get you what you need.
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pbreed
Posts: 1080
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:58 pm

Re: PK70 Erase Flash

Post by pbreed »

The PK70 has the following flash areas:

Boot
configuration
user param
application...
(Potentially file system) if you included one in your app...

Boot //Erase this and you have a brick


Loading an application that executes:

FlashErase( ( void * ) &UserParamBase, 8192 ); //Kills Userparam
FlashErase( ( void * ) 0xff830000, 0x3CFFF0); //Kills the entire APP image and any area set aside for file system.

Then while the unit is still running this app (its erased the flash image of itself, but its still running in RAM)
Use autoupdate to load some trivial app so you don't have to use the boot monitor to recover.
(The standardstack\web\simple html would be a good candidate for this).
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