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>
The image now runs from any 512-byte slot with every command intact:
control flow stays PC-relative, the write guard keys on the running slot
(the return-address anchor, computed once), the info block is addressed
from that same anchor as a byte pair (no absolute 16-bit address in the
image), and the application jump is an indirect call through a noipa-
laundered pointer to the absolute entry. 'J' — jump to a wire word
address, the one transfer primitive — replaces 'G': the host knows the
application entry from the info block, and moving between loader copies
needs arbitrary targets. The activation window is a compile-time 8 s
(PUREBOOT_TIMEOUT overrides), counted as a single calibrated poll loop.
A refused page no longer poisons the write-once temporary buffer (a real
silicon trap: the next write would program the drained data): every page
write discards the buffer first — CTPB on the tinies, on the mega the same
RWWSRE store that re-enables RWW after programming. The tinies' post-op
busy-waits go with it: their CPU halts through page erase and write.
488 / 502 / 504 B on t13a / t85 / mega — under the tinies' 510-byte budget,
whose last slot word is the host-managed trampoline: the resident's holds
the application entry, a staging copy's the jump through which an abandoned
update still times out into a loader.
The host tool updates the loader with itself: --update-loader installs the
identical image one slot below the resident, jumps into it, lets it rewrite
the resident, and restores the staging region from a state file — each
phase idempotent off the flash state, resumable after any interruption
(t13a: the staging slot carries the reset vector, written last in and
first out; t85: word 0 redirected around the resident rewrite; mega:
fuse-matrix preflight with a hard BOOTSZ gate and --assume-fuses for
simulators). Application flashing recovers by reset from any interruption:
patched page 0 and trampoline first, erase descending, and a walk-region
refusal behind --force on BOOTRST-below-loader megas.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
pureboot.py (Python stdlib only): images as raw binary or Intel HEX,
flash and EEPROM programming with read-back verify, erase composites,
fuse and info readout, activation-timeout configuration, and the
tinies' reset-vector surgery — the trampoline word below the loader,
page 0 written last.
The test spawns a simavr device (pureboot_device.c) — the mega's USART
as a pty; on the tinies a cycle-timed GPIO<->pty bridge for the polled
software UART plus the NVM module simavr's tiny cores lack (their SPM
opcode ioctls into a void and silently does nothing) — and drives it
with the real tool: knock from reset (erased-flash walk on the tinies),
program and verify both memories, timeout write, session reconnect, an
external reset through the patched vector, hand-over, and the fixture
application's banner. Results are cross-checked against ground-truth
memory dumps and an independent decode of the surgery's rjmp words,
red-verified against a sabotaged encoder.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>