Get "New interpreter error: UART_OVERFLOW" when trying to send code to flash

[deinhofer]

Hi,

I am getting this error, when trying to send the code of newmain-fixederrors-Deinhofer.js to flash. There is no problem, if I send it to RAM.

>New interpreter error: UART_OVERFLOW
Loading 13155 bytes from flash...
Uncaught SyntaxError: Got [ERASED] expected EOF
    at module (.bootcde:4:16)
b)};exports.cli[ERASED]...
                      ^
    at boot code (.bootcde:5:28)
b,()=>exports.keyUp(a,d))}});

Do you have an idea what could be the problem?

Thanks!

[gfwilliams]

Hi! What device are you sending code to - Puck.js? And how are you uploading it - over Serial, or Bluetooth?

Normally you'd just tend to upload over Bluetooth, but given the UART_OVERFLOW message I wonder if you're writing using Serial?

If you are sending over Serial, what baud rate are you running at? The default of 9600? Usually that'd be slow enough not to cause problems, but the nRF52 serial implementation has a really small buffer (basically 2 bytes) so I wonder if when writing to flash the softdevice is blocking interrupts for so long that the data being sent it getting lost, but I can't say I've seen this before.

In the mean time, if you can upload to flash over Bluetooth that'd definitely fix it.

[deinhofer]

I am sending it over Serial connection. This already worked before so I am wondering why it does not work any more.
Baud rate is at standard values.

When sending it over Bluetooth there is no flashing error, but I get the following, which is also not the case when just sending it to RAM:

Loading 13155 bytes from flash...
Uncaught TypeError: Assignment to a constant
    at boot code (.bootcde:58:14)
const MAX_BM = 7;

After the error I checked the 'Storage' and it had two files:

.bootcde
.varimg

I deleted both and then it suddenly worked.

Any idea what was the reason for this?

[gfwilliams]

On the upload: when did it stop working reliably for you? Someone else mentioned an issue recently related to the Web IDE - a change a few months ago might have meant it started sending code faster, and I'll look into that now and see if there's some issue there.

The Assignment to a constant error is because at some point you have used save() as well as saving to flash. Espruino supports two methods of saving:

• Saving the source code to flash - eg when the IDE is set to save to Flash. This is more efficient as code can be executed from flash, leaving the RAM free.
• Saving an image of the current state to flash - when you type save() in the REPL - this allows you to make modifications to code on the fly

The problem is when you use both together, and then you effectively end up with two copies of the code. Very recently (last week I think) I made some changes to save() to make it refuse to work when source code was already saved to flash as someone else had an issue - but that'll be in 2v29 so won't be in your build.

[gfwilliams]

I just had another look at the IDE - it looks like when slow write is enabled we're now not as slow as we were.

I believe I have fixed this now in the development IDE: https://espruino.github.io/EspruinoWebIDE/

Please can you take a look? I can upload a chunk of text over serial to nRF52 now without errors

[deinhofer]

Yes, thank's this works now also for my code!! :-)

[deinhofer]

There is also another issue with HID BLE packets still. I will open another issue.