[beagleboard] Building distribution for C4 hardware

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1

Hi there,

I have spent a couple of hours searching through the posts on this
subject, and can't find the information I need. The situation is that
my nice, stable bootloader that work on the C3 boards out in the
field, don't work with the C4 revision because of the USB PHY power
issue.

Using a pre-built binary won't cut it because I have my own portmux
requirements, so I need to patch and compile it myself.

The problem is that the patch I found doesn't match the beagle.c file
in my u-boot source. My question is:

Can I configure my openembedded project to use more recent kernel and
u-boot source? Currently it builds 2.6.29-R46 and U-Boot 2009.11-rc.
Obviously, I'd like to build it from code that already supports rev
C4.

Many thanks,
Tim

2

Ok, I got OE to build the latest u-boot by modifying u-boot_git.bb.
Thankfully, my USB health is restored.

However, I can't get u-boot to launch form the SD card unless I hold
down the User button on the board. I have newly partitioned the card
(http://cgit.openembedded.org/cgit.cgi/openembedded/tree/contrib/
angstrom/omap3-mkcard.sh) and MLO is in place.

Can someone explain why wasn't this an issue on the older revision
boards?

Thanks,
Tim

3

Just for the record. The difference between the different boards is documented in the System Reference Manuals. This operation has been the same on all boards from the very beginning. Nothing has changed. The board will ALWAYS boot from NAND first unless you hold the user button down, unless the NAND has been erased.

Gerald

4

Hi!

Just erase the environment is NAND and your board will begin to boot normally.

beagleboard.org > nand erase 260000 20000 ; reset

Gerald, I think there is a requirement to write BY BIG LETTERS that people have to erase old environment for u-boot in order to use the latest firmware. A lot of mail flood in this mail-list is about problems of booting with the latest MLO/u-boot

regards,
Max

2010/5/11 timmins <timtimminz@googlemail.com>

5

Thanks for the clarification! What is interesting is that erasing the
NAND wasn't something I needed to do with the C3 rev boards that came
straight out of our stock. They booted directly form the SD card,
using the SD u-boot and kernel image.

Thanks again,

Tim

6

The only way this would work the way you describe is if the NAND was empty. It always boots from NAND first.

Gerald

7

Just an added note, erasing the NAND from 260000 to 280000 didn't fix
it for me. I had to erase the lot:
$ nand erase 0 80000

Many thanks,
Tim