Looking at he .srec file, it appears that the image is to be loaded at 0xfff00000 . The configuration words are based there and _start is placed beyond them, at the image + 0x0100 .

The ADS board I am working with has the standard 8MB flash SIMM, which when the board boots from flash is mapped beginning at 0xff800000.

The flash is mapped to 0xff800000 but the CPU starts executing at 0xfff00100 (reset vector) 0xfff000000 contains the Hardware Configuration word.

The HRCW is what decides the reset vector address, and ont eh motorola ADS boards, theis is eityher feced from FLASH, or from a PLD, depening om a board jumper/switch.

Flash the image at an offset so that when booting from FLASH SIMM, the image is located at 0xfff00000 (When booting from EEPROM, find out the SIMM flash base address, and program at an offset of 0x00700000 into it)