Getting KL25Z bootloader to work without Windows 7

The one thing I hate about the Freedom KL25Z boards is that they are shipped with a bootloader that doesn’t work.  More precisely, they are shipped with a bootloader that works only with Windows 7, not Mac OS X, not Linux, and not even Windows 8.  (Note: never get P&E Micro to do any software work for you—they are responsible for this crappy bootloader.)  There is a newer bootloader from P&E Micro, but you need a Windows 7 computer to download it, so that does no good at all (it’s worse than that: see below).

I bought a new KL25Z board recently, to replace one that my son borrowed for Futuristic Lights, and soldered up the headers today, and was ready to test it out. I was hoping that they were now using one of the newer P&E bootloaders, that supposedly works on Macs (I’ve never seen a P&E bootloader that works with Macs, but I was willing to believe that P&E got enough complaints that they eventually fixed their bugs). Unfortunately, what I got is

MicroBoot Kernel Version is: 1.05
Bootloader Version is: 1.09

but P&E Micro reports

Bootloader versions 1.10 and earlier are not allowing firmware update and MSD FLASH programming on my OpenSDA board, with the Linux, MacOS, or Windows 8/8.1 operating systems.

I understand that on some of their newer boards, Freescale is using the mbed.org bootloader, which is the one I want to install on my KL25Z board. My choices at this point seem to be:

• Take the 6.5-mile bicycle ride round-trip to campus to use an ancient Windows 7 machine from the circuits lab (this is what I’ve done in the past).
• Buy a Windows 7 laptop to use at home, for initializing KL25Z boards and for testing PteroDAQ multi-platform support.
• Look on the web for a workaround.
• Ask my son if he found a workaround for his Linux laptop.

I’m too lazy to bike to campus (I did that cycle ride 4 times in the last 6 days), and I can’t get a laptop delivered instantly (and it will take quite a bit to put aside my aversion to Windows enough to buy even an $85 used laptop with Windows). That leave the web search and asking my son.

I did find a workaround on the web for Windows 8 [https://community.freescale.com/message/440982#440982]:

Configure “Do not allow locations on removable drives to be added to libraries”  as discussed here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-hardware/how-do-i-prevent-system-volume-information-files/815b0046-d631-4419-a43e-44083a3733f5 and you should be able to do updates from Windows 8.1.

I don’t know whether this workaround works, as I don’t have access to a Windows 8 machine to test it on.

My son pointed me to a workaround that has been posted for Linux systems [http://karibe.co.ke/2014/04/changing-the-firmware-on-freescale-freedom-boards-in-linux/], and that he has used successfully. I tried that on Mac OS X, but the utilities for manipulating mounting of disks is different—you need to use ‘diskutil unmount’ and there is no “modprobe”.

I tried doing the closest corresponding actions on Mac OS X, but they did not work.  I could unmount and mount the disk easily enough (it showed up as /dev/disk1, which can be most easily discovered with ‘diskutil list’), but copying the mbed sda file to the disk still had no effect.

We tried the original script from karibe.co.ke on my son’s Linux laptop, and it worked ok.  We could install the mbed.org firmware (from https://developer.mbed.org/handbook/Firmware-FRDM-KL25Z) using the Linux script with the unmount/mount trick. The mbed software worked as usual to download PteroDAQ to the board.

I think tried some more experimenting. We updated the Bootloader to v1.11, using the latest download from P&E Micro, as pointed to by their OpenSDA page. The update worked, to the extent that the Bootloader reported being v1.11, instead of 1.09, but despite P&E’s claims, it still did not work with Mac OS X. I could not download P&E micro .SDA files nor  the 20140530_k20dx128_kl25z_if_opensda.s19 file from mbed.org.

So we used my son’s Linux laptop again to put the mbed software on the KL25Z board, and I’ll have to be carefully not to get into Bootloader mode unless either he’s around with his laptop or I’m willing to cycle to campus.  (Or I break down and get a junky Windows laptop just for rebooting KL25Z boards.)

My son has been suggesting that we get a junky Windows box, so that he can test out the multi-platform features of PteroDAQ without having to cycle to campus with me.  I might do that while he is away at Ashland next week, if I can find a cheap enough laptop that I believe will actually function.