Turbine Compact - Image recovery

This article describes how the flash image of a Turbine Compact station can be recovered.

Before starting the upgrade process it is important to identify if the bootloader is corrupted or not.

• Corrupted bootloader
• The bootloader is intact

Requirements

• The application "Turbine Station Production Upgrade Application" installed on a Windows PC.
• A serial connection from the PC to the Turbine Compact board, using a USB to Serial cable
• A terminal emulator program, PuTTY is recommended

Setup

Preparation of the USB to Serial converter cable

The Turbine station has a TTL level serial interface which we need to connect to during the upgrade process. For this purpose a USB to Serial converter cable can be used. Recommended cable is TTL-232R-3V3 from Farnell.

This cable needs to be slightly modified as per photo below:

• Pin 1 = Black (GND)
• Pin 2 = Orange (Turbine RX)
• Pin 3 = Yellow (Turbine TX)

Original cable

Modified cable

Insert the USB connector in the PC. The unit will now install itself. Make a note of which COM port it is assigned to. You will also find the device in the Device Manager.

USB Serial Port in the Device Manager

Upgrade process

• Connect the USB to Serial converter cable to the PC and to the Turbine board
• Note that there also must be a strap as indicated on the drawing below.

Cable connection to Turbine serial interface. Note the additional strap which is required

• Start "PuTTY" (or another terminal emulator), and select COM port according to the device installation, and set Speed = 115200. Connection type = Serial.

PuTTY settings. COM port number might vary

• Download to the PC a Turbine Image file from AlphaWiki, e.g. tsi-3.0.3.4.zip. Do not extract the ZIP file.

• Start the "Turbine Station Production Upgrade Application" on the PC
  • Select "Image Archive", and browse to the tsi-3.0.3.4.zip file.

Turbine Station Production Upgrade Application. File Image tsi-3.0.3.4 selected

• If not already done, connect the PC to the network switch
• Connect the Turbine station to the network switch. The station will now start up, and you should see the boot sequence on the PuTTY terminal window
• During the initial booting, you will see "Hit any key to stop autoboot". Press any key to stop the booting process.

Initial boot process

Note: If you don't see any information at all on the PuTTY terminal window during the startup of the station, it could be that the actual bootloader is corrupted on the Turbine board. To eliminate any issues with the USB to Serial converter, you could try to connect your PC to an operational Turbine station, to verify that you get the boot sequence displayed on PuTTY.

Below is a drawing of your current setup, ready for image recovery. The IP addresses in the drawing are used as examples.

Image upgrade setup, ready for image recovery

In the PuTTY terminal window, type the following commands:

• Set IP settings:

eth0.ipaddr=10.5.101.140
eth0.gateway=10.5.101.1
eth0.netmask=255.255.255.0
eth0.serverip=10.5.101.123

• Write new bootloader and Bootloader environment:

update -t bootstream -d nand -f tsi_boot
update -t bareboxenv -d nand -f tsi_bareboxenv

• Program all images:

update -t kernel -d nand -f tsi-3.0.3.4_kernel
update -t rootfs -d nand -f tsi-3.0.3.4_rootfs