How to recover microcontrollers with a script #Debugging #Scripting @MCUonEclipse

The MCU-Link is an inexpensive CMSIS-DAP debug probe from NXP. It can be used as a GDB server debug probe, and as such it includes scripting support. This scripting can be very useful in some cases where the microcontroller (MCU) cannot be accessed by a normal debug session. This happens for example if students are not pay attention what binary they flash to which device, causing an MCU to potentially get ‘bricked’.

McuOnEclipe takes a look at MCU-Link and recovering a microcontroller via a script.

In this article, I give a short overview how to use scripts with the MCU-Link and Linkserver. Additionally I provide a script I’m using to recover MCU’s which are otherwise not accessible with a normal debug session. If flash security (see How (not) to Secure my Microcontroller) has been enabled, then you might be (officially) out of luck. But otherwise a small recovery script might you get you out.

The idea is to run a script with the debug probe, to catch the MCU right after it is coming out of reset. I’m using here the NXP MCU-Link debug probe, which can be used with an IDE like Eclipse (MCUXpresso IDE) or standalone in command-line mode using the LinkServer software.

Read the details in the post here.


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