Unbricking an EFM8UB3 Thunderboard
I've been doing some work recently with a little Silicon Labs EFM8UB3 microcontroller. This is a nice 8051 clone with a bunch of peripherals all in a QFN24 package. I've been using a minimal development board Silicon Labs calls the Thunderboard. It's mostly fine, but it has one failure mode that's pretty annoying. This article is about how to back out of that failure mode if you encounter it.
The Thunderboard has a built-in JLink debugger, and it's unfortunately possible to put the MCU into a state where the debugger can't talk to it. That means that you can't program the board any more, so you might think you're stuck. You're not!