External SPI flash error ESP_ERR_FLASH_NOT_INITIALISED on ESP32-S3 custom board

[davekrum]

Dear forumers!

We are developing a custom board with ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U 16R8 module with an
additional external ESP-PSRAM64 and a Winbond 25Q128 SPI FLASH.
However in the first prototypes there is a problem with initialization of the external flash, we test it by running an ESP-IDF example https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/tr ... lash_fatfs. So far we tried ESP-IDF 4.47 and 5.3.1 and the error occurs on both versions.

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I (30) boot: ESP-IDF v5.4-dev-3602-ga97a7b0962-dirty 2nd stage bootloader
I (30) boot: compile time Oct 21 2024 17:26:27
I (30) boot: Multicore bootloader
I (32) boot: chip revision: v0.2
I (35) boot: efuse block revision: v1.3
I (39) boot.esp32s3: Boot SPI Speed : 40MHz
I (43) boot.esp32s3: SPI Mode       : DIO
I (46) boot.esp32s3: SPI Flash Size : 16MB
I (50) boot: Enabling RNG early entropy source...
I (55) boot: Partition Table:
I (57) boot: ## Label            Usage          Type ST Offset   Length
I (64) boot:  0 nvs              WiFi data        01 02 00009000 00006000
I (70) boot:  1 phy_init         RF data          01 01 0000f000 00001000
I (77) boot:  2 factory          factory app      00 00 00010000 00100000
I (83) boot: End of partition table
I (86) esp_image: segment 0: paddr=00010020 vaddr=3c030020 size=0cd20h ( 52512) map
I (107) esp_image: segment 1: paddr=0001cd48 vaddr=3fc93e00 size=02f08h ( 12040) load
I (110) esp_image: segment 2: paddr=0001fc58 vaddr=40374000 size=003c0h (   960) load
I (111) esp_image: segment 3: paddr=00020020 vaddr=42000020 size=28308h (164616) map
I (159) esp_image: segment 4: paddr=00048330 vaddr=403743c0 size=0f980h ( 63872) load
I (177) esp_image: segment 5: paddr=00057cb8 vaddr=600fe100 size=00018h (    24) load
I (184) boot: Loaded app from partition at offset 0x10000
I (184) boot: Disabling RNG early entropy source...
I (195) octal_psram: vendor id    : 0x0d (AP)
I (195) octal_psram: dev id       : 0x02 (generation 3)
I (195) octal_psram: density      : 0x03 (64 Mbit)
I (197) octal_psram: good-die     : 0x01 (Pass)
I (202) octal_psram: Latency      : 0x01 (Fixed)
I (206) octal_psram: VCC          : 0x01 (3V)
I (210) octal_psram: SRF          : 0x01 (Fast Refresh)
I (215) octal_psram: BurstType    : 0x01 (Hybrid Wrap)
I (220) octal_psram: BurstLen     : 0x01 (32 Byte)
I (224) octal_psram: Readlatency  : 0x02 (10 cycles@Fixed)
I (230) octal_psram: DriveStrength: 0x00 (1/1)
I (234) esp_psram: Found 8MB PSRAM device
I (238) esp_psram: Speed: 40MHz
I (241) cpu_start: Multicore app
I (974) esp_psram: SPI SRAM memory test OK
I (984) cpu_start: Pro cpu start user code
I (984) cpu_start: cpu freq: 240000000 Hz
I (984) app_init: Application information:
I (984) app_init: Project name:     ext_flash_fatfs
I (989) app_init: App version:      v5.4-dev-3602-ga97a7b0962-dirty
I (995) app_init: Compile time:     Oct 21 2024 17:26:23
I (1000) app_init: ELF file SHA256:  d1eef487f...
I (1004) app_init: ESP-IDF:          v5.4-dev-3602-ga97a7b0962-dirty
I (1010) efuse_init: Min chip rev:     v0.0
I (1014) efuse_init: Max chip rev:     v0.99 
I (1018) efuse_init: Chip rev:         v0.2
I (1022) heap_init: Initializing. RAM available for dynamic allocation:
I (1029) heap_init: At 3FC976B0 len 00052060 (328 KiB): RAM
I (1034) heap_init: At 3FCE9710 len 00005724 (21 KiB): RAM
I (1039) heap_init: At 3FCF0000 len 00008000 (32 KiB): DRAM
I (1044) heap_init: At 600FE118 len 00001ED0 (7 KiB): RTCRAM
I (1050) esp_psram: Adding pool of 8192K of PSRAM memory to heap allocator
I (1058) spi_flash: detected chip: gd
I (1060) spi_flash: flash io: dio
I (1063) sleep_gpio: Configure to isolate all GPIO pins in sleep state
I (1069) sleep_gpio: Enable automatic switching of GPIO sleep configuration
I (1076) main_task: Started on CPU0
I (1106) esp_psram: Reserving pool of 32K of internal memory for DMA/internal allocations
I (1106) main_task: Calling app_main()
I (1106) example: Initializing external SPI Flash
I (1106) example: Pin assignments:
I (1116) example: MOSI: 11   MISO: 13   SCLK: 12   CS:  8
I (1116) example: DMA CHANNEL: 0
E (1126) example: Failed to initialize external Flash: ESP_ERR_FLASH_NOT_INITIALISED (0x6003)
I (1126) main_task: Returned from app_main()

PSRAM and SPIFLASH are both connected on the SPI2 (host id = 1) bus to the following IO pins. The list also includes other used pins:

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PSRAM_CS(SPI2_CS0)     IO10
FLASH_CS(SPI2_CS1)     IO8
SPI2_CLK               IO12
SPI2_SIO0 (SI)         IO11
SPI2_SIO1 (SO)         IO13
SPI2_SIO2 (WP)         IO14
SPI2_SIO3 (HOLD)       IO9

TX BG77   IO16
RX BG77    IO17
PWRKEY       IO15
SW1             IO1
TX MSP430 IO6
RX MSP430  IO7
LED GREEN    IO47
LED1 ORANGE  IO48
TPM SDA      IO39
TPM SCL      IO40
MSP_EVENT    IO5
MSP_PWRFAIL  IO4
USB D- TP1   IO19
USB D+ TP4   IO20

The external PSRAM works fine, it is initialized and added to the memory pool, although it must be set to run in octal mode(?) in the menuconfig. We also tried to disable it in the menuconfig.

What we tried:
- Disabling the external PSRAM in the menuconfig
- Changing both PSRAM & SPI FLASH frequencies from 20 to 80 MHz
- Disabling SPI FLASH DMA or setting it to AUTO
- Setting SPI FLASH CS ID from 0 to 3
- Setting various SPI speeds from SLOW to QIO
- This fix https://esp32.com/viewtopic.php?t=27631

SPI FLASH connection diagram

Screenshot from 2024-10-21 18-01-20.png (18.61 KiB) Viewed 465 times

PSRAM connection diagram

Screenshot from 2024-10-21 18-02-35.png (24.25 KiB) Viewed 465 times

EDIT:
The external flash can be successfuly programmed via esptool using the --spi-connection command.

[ESP_Sprite]

ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U 16R8

That module has 8MiB of psram internally (which probably is octal psram, hence you need to select that). Your project doesn't use the external psram at all.

I am not sure why the external flash isn't detected, but if it's on the same qspi bus as the (uninitialized) psram, perhaps the psram interferes. I'd suggest removing that (or manually setting its CS pin high) and seeing if that solves the issue.

[davekrum]

We found that when using this example https://github.com/nopnop2002/esp-idf-w25q64 the flash initializes and works correctly. BUT the example uses driver/spi_master.h and spi_bus_add_device instead of esp_flash spi_bus_add_flash_device.
The problem is that spi_bus_add_device returns different type of handler which we can not use in our code for registering the flash as an external partition with esp_partition_register_external.

Is there a way to register the flash as an external partition by using the driver/spi_master implementation and not the esp_flash one? esp_flash seems to be the problem.

When running the original external flash example ext_flash_fatfs on ESP-IDF 4.4.7 we get error:

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E (404) memspi: no response

.. and on ESP-IDF 5.0 or 5.3.1 we get the error:

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ESP_ERR_FLASH_NOT_INITIALISED (0x6003)

[davekrum]

We found that setting the PSRAM CS pin to HIGH solved the issue and now we are able to use the external flash properly.
The reason for this was that all the time we initialized and used only the internal PSRAM in the ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U module (SPI1), not the one we connected to SPI2, which was interfering with our FLASH.
It seems that there is no support for having two PSRAMS running simultaneously (SPI1 and SPI2). But you can prove me wrong.