1.5.2 Configuring an Application to Be Bootloaded for MIPS Based MCUs

Application Settings in MCC System Configuration

Launch MCC for the application project to be configured.
Select System component from the project graph and configure the below highlighted settings.
Disable Fuse Settings:
- Fuse settings needs to be disabled for the application which will be boot-loaded as the fuse settings are supposed to be programmed through programming tool from bootloader code
- The fuse settings are not programmable through firmware
- Enabling the fuse settings also increases the size of the binary when generated through the hex file
- When updating the bootloader itself, ensure that the fuse settings for the bootloader application are also disabled
Specify the Application Start Address:
- Specify the Start address from where the application will run under the Application Start Address (Hex) option in System block in MCC
- This value should be equal to or greater than the bootloader size and must be aligned to the erase unit size on that device
- As this value will be used by bootloader to jump to application at device reset it should match the value provided to bootloader code
- The Application Start Address (Hex) will be used to generate XC32 compiler settings to place the code at intended address
- After the project is regenerated, the ROM_ORIGIN and ROM_LENGTH are the XC32 linker variables which will be overridden with value provided for Application Start Address (Hex) and can be verified under Options for xc32-ld in Project Properties in MPLAB X IDE as shown below

Specifying post build option to automatically generate the binary file from hex file once the build is complete
- The generated binary file will serve as an input to the btl_bin_to_c_array.py to generate a C style array containing HEX data when the host_app_nvm host application is used
```
	${MP_CC_DIR}/xc32-objcopy -I ihex -O binary ${DISTDIR}/${PROJECTNAME}.${IMAGE_TYPE}.hex ${DISTDIR}/${PROJECTNAME}.${IMAGE_TYPE}.bin
```
Ensure that the dedicated linker file (app_mz.ld as an example) is added in the project. Due to the memory mapping of the device, not having a custom linker file while generate a too large binary file.

RAM_ORIGIN and RAM_LENGTH values should be provided for reserving configured bytes from start of RAM to trigger bootloader from firmware
Under Project Properties, expand options for xc32-ld and define the values for RAM_ORIGIN and RAM_LENGTH under Additional options
This is optional and can be ignored if not required