I just got my beagleboard today, and I have been trying to get it to
work for a couple of hours now. I have the BeagleBoard Gnome on an SD
card on the BB, and since I don't seem to have any HDMI cables, I am
using S-Video. According to everything I have seen, I should see
colored bars on the screen when the BB first starts. I don't. I also
have been trying to see whats going on via the serial header. I don't
have one of the cables, and so I put together my own using the pinouts
I found at pinouts.ru as well as several other sites. I tried minicom,
screen, and even just cat on linux, as well as hyperterm on windows,
and absolutely nothing is being sent via serial. Is there something I
am missing, or does it sound like I received a defective board?
It is not likely that you are received a defective board. It sounds like you are missing a lot of the necessary items to use your board, like cables. There is a section in the System Reference Manual that tells you how to make a cable or test out the cable you have. You will need to reverse TX and RX between the Beagle and the PC in order for it to communicate.
http://.beagleboard.org/hardware/design
How are you powering your board?
What are the LEDs doing when you boot the board without the SD card installed?
Gerald
I just got a board this week and it has been flawless. Section 12 of the reference manual is where I started and then I did a Debian netinstall. This is my first time using an ARM board and I am impressed with the simplicity of the whole process when following the available documentation.
Based on what you have stated I suspect you have a faulty serial setup. For you reference I am using a standard serial header, 3’ null modem cable and PL2303 USB serial port. I would double and triple check your serial setup first and foremost.