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axel101
Associate II
August 5, 2026
Question

STM32MP235 fails to boot

  • August 5, 2026
  • 0 replies
  • 34 views

I am using STM32MP235 on custom board. 

At some point, I wanted to update the firmware via SFU using STM32CubeProgrammer.
I rebooted the board in USB mode (setting the boot mode to BOOT using the pins) and launched CubeProgrammer.
TF-A-programmer-usb loaded onto the board normally, but after that, the board stopped responding via DFU.
After a power reset, the board boots in DFU mode, even though the internal eMMC contains the old firmware, and the default boot mode is eMMC.
As soon as TF-A is loaded onto the board, the board disappears. Nothing is written to the debug port, making it seem as if TF-A failed to boot.
I tried using ROMTrace TF-A. The behavior is exactly the same, and no trace is output to the port.
Pin PG4 (FAILBOOTN) is connected to a red LED. During normal boot, this LED starts blinking, and after flashing the TF-A (whether via USB or Serial), it turns solid.
The documentation says that the FAILBOOTN LED blinks when the board initially boots in USB/UART mode, meaning it doesn't even attempt to load the stock firmware?