AT32F403A anyone?

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webjorn
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Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:49 pm

AT32F403A anyone?

Post by webjorn »

Hello,

I have ordered three of these Weact black pill boards. I get no matches searching this forum. As I understand it it is just a faster ( 240 Mhz ) replacement for STM32F103 that i have been using up til now. It seems a new cpu / platform needs to be defined. Is this misplaced here since this forum is dealing with ST microprocessors, or is it your opinion an Artery chip will fit in to the STM32 structure and eventually gain support?
Rgds
Gullik
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Juraj
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by Juraj »

did you try it as STM32F403?
GonzoG
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by GonzoG »

Juraj wrote: Sun Jul 10, 2022 6:32 am did you try it as STM32F403?
ST32F403 does not exist.

@webjorn
AT32F403 is not a replacement for ST32F103. Those a 2 different MCUs. F1 is a Cortex M3, F4 is Cortex M4 with FPU.
Also this is official STM forum for stm32duino which is official STM core for Arduino IDE. I don't think that they will have time and will to support other chips.
But it's an open source project so you can try and adapt it for Artery MCUs.
webjorn
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by webjorn »

Ok, "replacement" was perhaps a simplified statement. I have been reading up to compare this with what I have (F103), and came to the conclusion that the AT32F403 is a substiturte where the actual CPU is more modern and advanced and faster, while the I/O is simpler, and more or less the same than in the 103.

Gullik
webjorn
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by webjorn »

Ok, my 3 "pills" seem to arrived in Sweden.

Now we only have to wait for customs to clear the package. It seems this quite interesting mcu/board is not well supported by Arduino,
but we'll see how to work around this.

I have geared up with a ST-LINK programmer, I do not really know if it adds anything, the serial load code should be there anyway (???) so that
I should be able to download code from a simple TTL/USB dongle.

It seems Artery are mostly interested in Kiel and IAR, but less written about the Arduino environment. We'll see...
Gullik
webjorn
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by webjorn »

After waiting 5 days for Postnord to transport my little bag from customs to my address, I now have my boards.

Plugging it in with a USB-C cable, I was greeted to a mounted file system on my Linux laptop. It contains
some documents, and URL's to places Weact Studio, alibaba etc. This is accompanied with a blinky, showing that
the board is alive.

Attempting to use the STM32CubeProgrammer results in a device connect error, probably due to an unknown chip-id.
So, no luck here, I will have to resort to serial programming....if I can get that to work.....

There are tools from Weact, but these require a Windows computer, I'll see if I can blow life into any old machine...

240 Mhz, M4 core, and as I understand "old" f103 peripherals.....

Regards,
Gullik
webjorn
Posts: 43
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by webjorn »

After mucking about with various st tools with no success, I compiled stm32flash . It says

Interface serial_posix: 57600 8E1
Version : 0x32
Option 1 : 0x47
Option 2 : 0x03
Device ID : 0x0430 (STM32F10xxx XL-density)
- RAM : Up to 96KiB (2048b reserved by bootloader)
- Flash : Up to 1024KiB (size first sector: 2x2048)
- Option RAM : 16b
- System RAM : 6KiB

This looks nice, this is what an original stm32f103 says

Interface serial_posix: 115200 8E1
Version : 0x22
Option 1 : 0x00
Option 2 : 0x00
Device ID : 0x0410 (STM32F10xxx Medium-density)
- RAM : Up to 20KiB (512b reserved by bootloader)
- Flash : Up to 128KiB (size first sector: 4x1024)
- Option RAM : 16b
- System RAM : 2KiB

Interesting is that the 403a claims it is a F10xxx.

So, serial load / debug is relatively compatible....

I guess I should be able to flash it now, I will just save the onboard flash with the file system on.

Gullik
GonzoG
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by GonzoG »

webjorn wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 10:41 pm ...
Interesting is that the 403a claims it is a F10xxx.
...
No, it does not. It only uses same device ID but those are assigned but manufacturer. So 2 different products form 2 manufacturers can have same device ID.
If it was STM32 chip then it would be F10xxx, but it's not.
webjorn
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Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by webjorn »

"Interesting is that the 403a claims it is a F10xxx."

should be

stm32flash interprets the ID as a F10xxx.

GonsoG: I had no idea, but it makes sense, STM surely does not want to help a clone mfgr, in my mind I thought the ID's were coordinated by ARM or somesuch. Do STM manufacture a chip with 0x430 as id?

Some progress:

Trying to power the weact board from my laptop, causes the USB DFU to activate, so I get no response from the serial. Powering the board from a powerbank, I can get the posted ID info, and also download flash to a file.

Next step: program something into the board:

Gullik
webjorn
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:49 pm

Re: AT32F403A anyone?

Post by webjorn »

One more step forward.....
I failed to program the board using Arduino and "Generic STM32F4 series"

Programming via serial seemed OK, and the IDE reported Successful start, but the "led did not blink"

I then changed processor type to Arduino STM32 / STM32F103ZC, and now I could download code.

I have not checked, but maybe port PC13 has a different address in STM32F4xx than in STM32F103xx.

Anyway, success as far as getting the board to run, now to figure out if I am running M3 or M4 code and if FP works.

To anyone struggling with programming the flash, I used serial download, and had to power the board from a POWER pack,
rather than a pc USB port ( which starts DFU ).

So, I can run a blinky ( by the way, LED port is PC13 ), now for trying to determine if we do have a M4 (all the way) and if it indeed runs at 240 Mhz.
I can also do println("AT32F403A test""); and I get it on the serial port.

Nice,

Gullik
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