Windows users and unbricking an i.MX device

For a while now, we've been planning to update our imx_usb tool to fully support Windows through libusb and Cygwin, but it looks like that isn't necessary.

We recently found out that Freescale has a tool called sb_loader that is a direct equivalent and is a Windows native program, so it doesn't require Cygwin.

Freescale distributes this tool as a part of their Manufacturing Tool, that you can download from here:

• Freescale Manufacturing Tool

Note that the link above is a tar-ball though. Since Windows users don't often have the tools needed to extract from that format, we've placed a copy on-line:

• sb_loader.zip

Usage is pretty simple. If you invoke sb_loader with the -f flag, you can give it a file name to load, and it will load and execute the image on the connected device in the same way as imx_usb.

C:downloadssb_loadersb_loader>sb_loader.exe -f u-boot.imx
Executed plugin successfully.
Succeed to download u-boot.imx to the device.
Run into the image successfully.

Refer to our unbricking post for more information about how to use this to re-program or restore an image into the on-board flash.