In case you'd like to keep the factory bootloader on the nrf52840 dongle: This contains an nrf52840_if build with flash offset 0x1000. You can program the HEX file with the nRF Connect Programmer app. PCA10059_daplink.zip

Hello all,

Here is my short statement on the pull request:
The results demonstrate that the proposed modifications are functional, stable, and ready to be merged as much as my experience can show.

The long story:
I have tested and I am using the changes from the current pull request to perform target programming and debugging. Here is description on what was done.

Two devices have been used as DAPLink debug probes.

nRF52840 Dongle by Nordic Semiconductor [1]

The dongle was used with the default pinout assignment from the pull request (see /docs/hic/nrf52840.md from the feature branch)

nRF52840 MDK USB Dongle by Makerdiary [2]

The Makerdiary's dongle was used with overridden pinout assignment to mach the dongle pinout [3] and the pin assignment used in their DAPLink firmware [4]

Pinout Assignment	Pinout View
Signal I/O Symbol Pin SWD interface SWCLK O P0.05 5 SWDIO I/O P0.06 6 nRST O P0.04 4 UART interface UART TX I P0.20 14 UART RX O P0.21 13

NOTE: Makerdiary's dongle has UF2 bootloader and the application start address is at 0x1000, which is the same as the application start address on Nordic's dongle.

Setup

I am using multiple of both dongles on two setups:

1. Windows system
2. Ubuntu system

both setups are using pyOCD version 0.35.1 (due to the RTT not working on top version, although it was fixed, but there is one line patch provided by a user which works unlike the official fix... this is another story).

Both dongles are targeting devices with nRF52832 SoC [5] on them.

Usage

Both types of dongles are used as debug probes for the following:

1. Firmware upload - pyocd load --target nrf52832 <image.hex>
2. Chip erasure - pyocd erase --target nrf52832 <--chip, --mass>
3. Using the target's Debug Access Port to write into its UICR registers - pyocd commander --target nrf52832 <-N, -c some commands>
4. On-chip debugging via Cortex-Debug VS Code extension - pyocd gdbserver --target nrf52832 ...
5. Real Time Transfer terminal usage - pyocd rtt --target nrf52832

Conclusion

The testing and usage of both Nordic Semiconductor's nRF52840 Dongle and Makerdiary's nRF52840 MDK USB Dongle as DAPLink debug probes have been successful. Throughout various programming and debugging operations in the described setups.
Overall, the changes present in the current pull request prove to be functional and ready to be used in real world scenario.

References and Sources

[1] Nordic Semiconductor. (n.d.). nRF52840 Dongle.

[2] Makerdiary. (n.d.). nRF52840 Micro Dev Kit USB Dongle.

[3] Makerdiary. (n.d.). nRF52840 Micro Dev Kit USB Dongle pinout.

[4] Makerdiary. (n.d.). Using DAPLink Firmware.

[5] Nordic Semiconductor. (n.d.). nRF52832 SoC.

Edit: fixed some typos