Beagleboard-xM DVI-D port freeze

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1

Hi everyone

I recently bought a beagle-xm and a DLP pico projector. When I connect
them together and power up, they worked fine.....for about 5 minutes.
Then the video output starts to freeze, and on the top of the screen
there is a strip of noise signals. It even freeze in the middle a
video play. The only way I found to solve this is to totally reset the
board. Does anyone have the same problem and solve it in the other
way? I really don't want to reset my board every 5 minutes.

2

How does the board perform in a non DLP configuration? What resolution are you running?

Gerald

3

Hi Gerald,

I don't have other screens that have the DVI-D port so I can't really
tell how it performs in a non-DLP environment. But I doubt it is the
pico projector that causes this problem since it worked fine for 5
minutes. The resolution I set is 640x480 to match the resolution of
the pico projector. I modified user.scr for the resolution thing using
the edituserscr command. My guess is that the frame buffer becomes
full as we play the videos and it does not clear it automatically. I
am not an expert so that's just a guess.

Thanks for replying

4

The idea was to change the resolution and try it on another display in order to determine if there may be an issue with that particular display setting. Sounds like that isn’t possible.

The next question is to find out what image you are running on the -xM and what application you are running to play the video. If you do not play the video and just leave a static desktop, does it still fail after 5 minutes as well?

Gerald

5

I tried mplayer and omapfbplay to play the video, and they both fail
after 5 minutes. I also tried to NOT play anything but it still
freeze.

Thanks.

6

The image on my beagle-xm is the one come with the board, which is
Angstrom 2010.7-test-20100820.

7

Where is the Pico located? It can run very hot which could cause issues., but I don’t think that is likely your issue. The 5 minute number is odd and seems to be consistent from what you say.

Any chance you can answer my other question about the image you are running?
What happens to the LEDs on the board when the board freezes?

Gerald

8

It is not exactly 5 minutes. It could freeze at any time after the 5
minutes time. The longest time that the video output didn't freeze was
11 minutes. Also, everything else works fine still except for the
video output. I am not sure of the LEDs on the board because I
currently am not near the board. I'll give you an update tomorrow.

For the pico, I also tried waiting for a long time then turned it on.
The video output showed the noise signal strips on top of the screen
and froze still.

9

OK. I need some information from you. If you can, get me the answers as follows.

  1. What is the state of the LEDs when the display freezes?
  2. How are you powering the board?
  3. Using the LED activity as your guide, replace the boot.scr with the original version as shipped from the factory. Then reboot the board and see if you see any difference in the operation of the LEDs.

Gerald

10

Hi Gerald,

1) Two LEDs D5 and D14 are on and D6 is blinking when the display
freezes.
2) I use a 5v 1.2A power adapter to power up the board. Because when I
power up with the USB, there is a kernel panic error and BB-xM won't
boot.
3) There's no difference of the LED operations.

Thanks

11

Correct. There is an issue with using USB OTG as you will get a kernel panic if it is connected to a PC.Now, 1.2A may not be enough. I recommend 3A because the Hub takes a chunk of power, especially if you use the USB ports and Ethernet.

It sounds like the board is actually running but something else is going on. I don’t think this can be debugged via email. I suggest you request an RMA and let the guys run a full production test on the board.

Gerald