The word-addressed 1284s were the one family deploying in a 1 KiB slot,
because the far-flash machinery (ELPM reads, RAMPZ page commands, a
word-addressed wire) did not fit 512 B. It does now: 478 B stock, 494 B in
the heaviest configuration the build can produce. They take the 644s'
geometry, where the smallest boot section holds the resident slot and its
staging slot together. The loader's version goes to 3; the host tool did
not change, so its own version stays 2 and only the window it speaks
widens.
Most of the saving is one restructure. The info block and a flash read are
the same act, so giving all four streamed commands one address-and-count
path leaves exactly one call site for the flash streamer: it inlines into
the never-returning command loop and its 24-bit cursor stops being saved
and restored around every transmit. Around it, the ack byte moved out of
line, the wire's byte pair is bit_cast into the word it already is, the
fuse loop ends on its count, the info block's in-slot offset is taken as
the one-byte relocation it is, and -fno-expensive-optimizations gives way
to -fno-move-loop-invariants -fno-tree-ter. Every chip shrank 14-18 B.
The size matrix grew the axes it was missing: the USART1 instance across
the whole clock ladder, and the shape a slow baud gives a software UART —
past 255 delay iterations libavr takes the 16-bit delay loop, which the
ladder default never selects and which was 4 B over the 1284's slot the
first time it was built.
The protocol fixture stopped deriving the loader entry from the flash
size; on the 1284s it had been jumping a slot low and reaching the loader
only because erased flash walked it up.
Docs and comments were consolidated across the port in the same pass: the
README carries a per-chip size table instead of prose, and prose that
restated the code is gone — 190 lines, no behaviour with it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The temporary page buffer is write-once per word, so a page filled over
one an earlier writer left dirty programs the stale words. The same
datasheet clause carries the cure: the buffer auto-erases after a page
write (§26.2.1; §19.2 on the tinies), so the corruption clears itself by
happening, and rewriting the page programs correctly.
The loader therefore clears the buffer nowhere. The tinies' CTPB and the
m48s' RWWSRE discard are gone; the boot-sectioned megas keep only the
trailing RWWSRE they need anyway to re-enable the RWW section for
read-back, which discards the buffer as a side effect and keeps them off
the path entirely. 434 B on the tiny13s, 438-442 on the tiny25/45/85,
430 on the m48s; the megas are unchanged, the 1284s still 506.
The host takes over the guarantee: a flash page that reads back wrong is
rewritten up to RETRIES times before the run stops. Both read-back paths
repair — verify_pages for programming, and write_differing, which is the
loader-update path where a page left wrong is a half-written loader slot.
That one is not hypothetical: deleting the discard made attiny85
pureboot.rehome fail deterministically there, the only flow still
assuming the old contract.
Protocol-visible, so README's W command says it: one W may program the
wrong bytes after a refused page, or after an application that
self-programmed entered without a reset, and a host that programs without
reading back cannot trust it.
Tests: pureboot.dirty drives the case the loader declines to guard — the
fixture application dirties every buffer word and jumps in with no reset
(hardware forbids that on a boot-sectioned mega, but simavr dispatches SPM
from anywhere, which is what makes it constructible) — and asserts a bare
verify sees the corruption, the repairing verify fixes it in one rewrite,
and it stays fixed. pbreloc asserts the same shape after a refusal.
test_planner covers the bound against a fake device: one bad write
repaired in a single rewrite, a page that never comes good stopping after
exactly three.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Clock, baud, serial backend (hardware USART 0/1 or the software UART on
any pins) and the activation window all resolve through one CMake
function, pureboot_add_loader() in pureboot/CMakeLists.txt — the unit a
downstream project consumes. The default baud is the fastest standard
rate within 2.5 % (the same best-divisor search libavr's solver runs),
gated on software builds by the polled receiver's 100-cycles-a-bit
floor; every explicit pick is re-checked by the compile's static asserts.
The size matrix builds each axis that can move the image — backend x
clock ladder x USART instance, per chip — against the slot budget, and
two nondefault deployments run the whole protocol suite live: the 328P
on its shipped 1 MHz fuses over software serial on TX=PB1/RX=PB5
(pureboot.custom), and the 644A over USART1 (pureboot.usart1). The sim
runner takes -l to bridge any link, paces a fully quiet bridge toward
real time (a free-running 8 M-cycle window loses the reset-race knock),
and the fixture application speaks the deployment it is built for.
The loader itself shed bytes on the way: the return-address high byte
spelled through byteswap (the double swap folds to the one-byte pick),
the info-block address composed instead of bit_cast, and libavr's new
polled-UART helpers replacing the port's uart::detail reaches. Every
combination fits: 458-506 B across the megas' whole matrix, 470-484 B
on the tinies, 556-562 B in the 1284s' 1 KiB slot.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
