NUCLEO-N657X0-Q Flash partition FileX

[neil1106]

I have a project working on the NUCLEO-N657X0-Q with FSBL and an application. In total I am using under 1MB of the 64MB flash this board has. I was wondering if it was possible to segment off the rest of the flash to be used as a mass storage device over USBX with FileX. I am using the load and run config instead of XIP.

The current flash usage is as follows:

• 0x70000000 - FSBL (66KB)
• 0x70100000 - Application (100KB)
• 0x71000000 - Weights and activations (400KB)

I know I can use cube programmer to write external data directly to the memory mapped flash drive but I would prefer to use standard file access tools. I have successfully implemented mass storage on a STM32H5 but that MCU didn't need to also load firmware so FileX could manage the whole drive as if it was empty. 

Alternatively would it be possible to instead use FileX to load the FSBL/Application parts instead of the external memory manager?

[MFARH.1 · Accepted solution]

Hello @neil1106 ,

No, FileX cannot be used to load the FSBL or Application instead of the external memory manager. FileX is a file system designed to handle storage volumes and file operations, but it is not meant to replace the bootloader or the low-level memory management required for firmware loading. The FSBL and Application must be located at fixed memory addresses that the MCU can directly access during the boot process. FileX’s functionality is limited to managing separate storage partitions for file data and does not extend to managing firmware loading.

BR,

M.F

[neil1106]

I forgot I posted this but I figured it out in the end. I use cube programmer to place the FSBL/Appl in the correct places. Then use filex to read the rest of the flash by address.