Bootloading

2022-08-01 Notes on bootloaders for microcontrollers

Keywords: bootloader :: bootloaders :: serial bootloader :: serial bootloading

A starting point, which links to five articles on differing bootloading approaches:

• https://interrupt.memfault.com/tag/zero-to-main/

13 Aug 2019 by François Baldassari
• https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/how-to-write-a-bootloader-from-scratch

2022-08-03

What is a serial bootloader and how is it used?

Following link gives Silabs example, but is not a good general explanation:

• https://community.silabs.com/s/article/what-is-serial-bootloader-and-how-to-use-it-x?language=en_US
• https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/application-notes/AN1011-efm32-standalone-programmer.pdf

^ Atmel bootloader

• https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/Atmel-8390-WIRELESS-AVR2054-Serial-Bootloader-User-Guide_Application-Note.pdf

^ STMicro bootloaders

• https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/an3155-usart-protocol-used-in-the-stm32-bootloader-stmicroelectronics.pdf

Following is an interesting link in that it appears to cause web browser to download the linked pdf file, and then subsequent visits to this link redirect to the local downloaded copy:

• https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/cd00167594-stm32-microcontroller-system-memory-boot-mode-stmicroelectronics.pdf

^ RP2040 bootloaders

• https://blog.usedbytes.com/2021/12/pico-serial-bootloader/ RP2040 bootloader by Brian Starkey

• https://github.com/usedbytes/rp2040-serial-bootloader . . . bootloader by 'usedbytes'
• https://github.com/rhulme/pico-flashloader . . . bootloader by rhulme, small at less than 4kb
• https://github.com/dwelch67/raspberrypi-pico/tree/main/bootloader10 . . . bootloader by dwelch67

^ References

• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/bootloader-differences/274747/3