NAME

srec_mips_flash - MIPS‐Flash file format

DESCRIPTION

The MIPS SDE tool chain has a convert program that is able to output this format. I have no idea what reads it, some kind of flash programmer I suppose.

Format

The file must start with '!R' to reset the state machine. White space appears to be ignored, except as it serves to separate tokens.

Data is presented as 32‐bit hexadecimal numbers, in the normal big‐endian text number format. To write them to memory, you have to know if the target is big‐endian or little‐endian. for little endian targets, reverse the order of the bytes in this number.

The eight bytes following a '>' are a sort of comment. The SDE code reads like they are displayed in the flash programmer as a kind of progress indicator.

The number following '@' is a new address for the following data.

Each segment must be erased before it can be written, this is done with the '!E' command. Each segment is assumed to be 128kB in size.

Special segments must unlocked (with the '!C' command) and locked again (with the '!S' command).

This file format contains no checksum mechanism.

Command Line Options

This format is specified using one of the -Mips‐Flash‐Big_Endian or -Mips‐Flash‐Little_Endian options. The endian‐ness must be specified on the command line, because there is nothing in the file contents to indicate the endian‐ness of the data it contains.

Size Multiplier

In general, binary data will expand in sized by approximately 2.3 times when represented with this format (worse if you use shorter lines).

EXAMPLE

Here is an example MIPS‐Flash file. It contains the data “Hello, World” to be loaded at bytes address 0x0000 (but remember, the file contents are always multiples of four bytes).

!R
>00000xxx @00000000 !E
@00000000
>00000000
48656C6C 6F2C2057 6F726C64 210A0000
>#DL_DONE
>FINISHED

COPYRIGHT

The srec_cat program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use the 'srec_cat -VERSion License' command. This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details use the 'srec_cat -VERSion License' command.

MAINTAINER

Scott Finneran	E‐Mail:	scottfinneran@yahoo.com.au
Peter Miller	E‐Mail:	pmiller@opensource.org.au

COPYRIGHT

The srec_cat program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use the 'srec_cat -VERSion License' command. This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details use the 'srec_cat -VERSion License' command.

MAINTAINER

Scott Finneran	E‐Mail:	scottfinneran@yahoo.com.au
Peter Miller	E‐Mail:	pmiller@opensource.org.au