Device: boot-section detection probes SPMCR beside SPMCSR, the link
picks any hardware USART through the instance-aware lookups (URSEL
chips included), WDRF reads MCUSR-or-MCUCSR, and the >64 KiB shape
lands — word-addressed wire flash (info flag bit 1, page byte 0 means
256, base as a word address), far reads through flash_load_far, a
single 32-bit byte-cursor page walk (the 256-byte page wraps its low
byte exactly), and slot arithmetic in words (the return address
already is one). Host: addresses stay bytes internally and scale at
the wire, the boot-fuse decode becomes a per-signature table (byte
index + BOOTSZ ladder — the m168A's lives in EXTENDED), and the
planner tests pin every chip's ladder plus the word-addressed info
decode. Tests: the device runner serves every mega over the USART pty,
pbapp banners over the right link, the update rehearsal synthesizes
its assumed fuses from the tool's own table, and the PI lint tracks
the renamed info symbol. All six classic-mega/168A targets pass the
full suite (size, PI, planner, protocol, reloc, self-update) at
466–504 B; the 1284P builds await a libavr far-path slimming to make
its 512.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
No inline assembly, no global register variables; libavr does the
datasheet work. The device speaks primitives — flash read/page-program,
EEPROM read/write, fuse read, info block, EEPROM-resident activation
timeout, hand-over — and verify, erase, reset-vector surgery, and
timeout configuration live in the host tool. 490 B on the ATtiny13A,
510 B on the ATtiny85, 484 B on the ATmega328P, each linked into the
top 512 bytes of flash; per-chip size tests gate all three.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The native-UART fixed-baud TinySafeBoot protocol, ported onto libavr as a
crt-free boot-section loader, in three variants that trade clarity for size:
tsb_pure 740 B idiomatic C++: SRAM page buffer, separate flash/EEPROM
leaves, shared framing; the polled `unused` guard posture.
tsb_tricks 658 B unified runtime-flag paths (noinline/noclone), call-saved
global-register page walk — attributes only, no asm.
tsb_asm 508 B streaming store + hand-rolled UART/SPM/EEPROM/erase loops;
fits the 512 B boot section (BOOTSZ=11). Trims the optional
password gate and WDT-reset bail — unreachable in C++ with
both (hand-asm is ~15 % denser). Tiers 1-2 keep them and
live in the 1 KB section they fit.
All three are .text byte-identical across libavr's generated and reflect modes.
The CMake build strips the leaked -O3 (a Release build is silently -O3, not the
-Os this loader is measured against) and gates each variant's size against its
section. A simavr harness (test/device.c + test/tsbtest.py) drives the real wire
protocol over a pty and flashes the device; the size and protocol tests run in
ctest. Verified byte-for-byte against the reference tsbloader_adv (C#/mono):
activate, read info, flash write + verify.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
