Flashing Neo Freerunner for Dummies

[Alastair Johnson]

simarillion wrote:
> Hi together,
> 
> I'm a little bit confused. I just received my Freerunner one hour ago. 
> Now I want to try the several images.
> 
> In the wiki 
> (http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Getting_Started_with_your_Neo_FreeRunner) 
> is written: "Before you execute the command , please log in Neo 
> FreeRunner in NOR Flash ."
> But in the instruction manual they say NOR is only for emergency and can 
> not be written by dfu-util. Is this a mistake in the wiki?

This is not a mistake. Follow the instructions on the wiki and it will work.

The Freerunner has 2 copies of uBoot, one in NAND and one in NOR. The 
one in NOR can't be overwritten without the debug board, while the one 
in NAND can be overwritten using dfu-util. If you manage to overwrite 
the NAND uBoot with a non-working version you can still use the NOR 
version to flash a working uBoot into NAND. This is what the 
instructions mean when they talk about it being for emergencies. I don't 
think it makes any difference whether you use the NAND or NOR version 
for flashing kernel and rootfs, but so far I have always used the NOR 
version and it has always worked.