BeagleBoard C4 difficulty recovering UART

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1

Hi, I believe while erasing the nand I accidentally skipped a step
before exiting minicom and since I haven't been able to boot. I'm
guessing this board is bricked based on the results Im seeing. Also I
realize it says "error reading boot sector" but I've tried multiple
cards and they aren't working I think I may have installed the wrong x-
loader too!

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.2 (Feb 19 2009 - 12:01:24)
Reading boot sector
Error: reading boot sector
Loading u-boot.bin from nand

stuck here /\

naturally I checked the various documentation available and followed
the steps on this wiki

http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardRecovery

However I'm not able to boot from MMC, or from USB while holding the
'user' button on boot. Instead I receive this result in minicom
40W`C�H�U��� I have no idea what these symbols mean. I
dont think they copied properly into this text field.

Instead I tried following the instructions for UART recovery, which
has worked for me in the past. However this time I'm not able to
connect using ukermit to swap the u-boot via minicom

skynet@skynet-desktop:~/Downloads/beagle/boot_omap3_serial$ ./pserial -
p /dev/ttyUSB0 -f x-load.bin.ift
Waiting For Device ASIC ID: Press Ctrl+C to stop
ASIC ID Detected.
Sending 2ndFile:
Downloading file: 100.000% completed(20392/20392 bytes)
File download completed.
skynet@skynet-desktop:~/Downloads/beagle/boot_omap3_serial$ ./ukermit -
p /dev/ttyUSB0 -f u-boot.bin
Failed after 4 retries in sequence 0 - success send = 0 bytes
Data transmit failed

How can I swap the u-boot if ukermit can't even transmit? I repeat the
same commands over and over with the same result.

ANY help at all would be appreciated. Thank you for your valuable
time.

2

Hi Grant,

if you see 40W, then the board is not bricked. If you hold the user
button and cannot boot from SD card, it's 99% that you card is not
created correctly. Download images and follow instruction from

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/

and you'll get you board back into working state. I had the same problem.

Regards,
Maksym.

3

You were correct on my mistaken assertion that the board was bricked.
So I followed the instructions to install angstrom however I managed
to get this "wrong image format" error. Any ideas on a solution?

Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Jul 28 2010 - 16:59:13)
Beagle Rev
C4
Reading boot
sector
Loading u-boot.bin from
mmc

U-Boot 2010.03 (Aug 06 2010 -
11:28:56)

OMAP3530-GP ES3.1, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max
clock-720Mhz
OMAP3 Beagle board + LPDDR/
NAND
I2C:
ready
DRAM: 256
MB
NAND: 256
MiB
In:
serial
Out:
serial
Err:
serial

Probing for expansion boards, if none are connected you'll see a
harmless I2C e.

timed out in wait_for_pin:
I2C_STAT=0
I2C read: I/O
error
Unrecognized expansion board:
0
Beagle Rev
C4
Die ID
#3050000400000000040372591601000e
Hit any key to stop autoboot:
0
Unknown command 'mmcinit' - try
'help'

** Unable to use mmc 0:1 for fatload

4

Grant - try stopping the countdown and typing “mmc init” instead of “mmcinit”. If it says “mmc1 available” (or something similar), try “boot”. It sounds like your boot script must be ancient.

5

Hi Jeff thank you for your reply,

OMAP3 beagleboard.org # mmc
init
mmc1 is
available
OMAP3 beagleboard.org #
boot
Unknown command 'mmcinit' - try
'help'
reading
uImage

** Unable to read "uImage" from mmc 0:1

6

Grant,

you need to reset your environment to default. Have you went through
all the steps on the page I've sent you ? Or search this forum on
reset default environment, answer from Koen comes every week or so.

Cheers,
Maksym.

7

Thanks for all your help guys! Successfully ran angstrom, just needed
to flash the nand again and write a different u-boot to it. Watched
Big Buck Bunny, everything works great!

If anyone else has the same problems see the Beagleboard validation
page.

Learned from my mistakes, much appreciation for your help.