Beaglebone Black flashing via µSD card is not working

General Discussion
1

Hello to all! It is my first time with a Beaglebone Black today, and I was entrusted to flash and test its capabilities at my internship. I have been having difficulties flashing it with the latest disk image from the official Beaglebone forums (AM335x 11.7 2023-09-02 4GB microSD IoT - BeagleBoard).

At first I tried balena to etch the image into the µSD card to flash the device, which did not work due to this error (Error(0,h.requestMetadata) is not a function - balenaEtcher - balenaForums). I then tried ventoy which took way too long initially, as the guides said it would take 20-45 mins, then finally, Win32 Disk Imager, which took about the same time (I settled for it).

After writing the µSD card, I tried the BOOT button method multiple times, waited for about 45 minutes for each try, tried the minimal image instead for flashing.

Eventually, I tried removing the eMMC via the command mentioned here (beagleboneblack - Beaglebone Black not Working After Failed Attempt at Flashing eMMC - Stack Overflow). I chose this because other methods were unavailable at the time since it kept saying memory was full.

Then I resumed trying to flash the device with the original image I wanted to no success.

Could you please help me? Thank you.

1 Like
2

Do you have a usb serial adapter plugged into J1?

With the microSD inserted in the board, plug in power… Hold ‘S2’ button, hold ‘S1’ button, let go of ‘reset’ button, wait for 4 led to turn on, left off ‘S2’ button…

Regards

3

Im not familiar with J1, but I have a cord plugged into the µUSB port under the 4 LEDs if that is what you are referring to.

As for the process you described, I will try it the next time I handle the device again. I just want to clarify the procedure in terms I am familiar with:

Hold BOOT button
While holding the BOOT button, hold RST button
Let go of RST button
Wait for the 4 LEDs to light up
Let go of BOOT button

The only response I got was LEDs 0 and 2 blinking regularly, and LED 1 blink sporadically.

I also wanted to ask, will the PWR button not be used in this procedure?

Thank you.

4

Nope. it’s the 5 pin on top…

and what image (file name) did you flash to the microSD?

5

nope I didnt use that, we dont have a cable like that =/

I used this image to flash the µSD card:

Screenshot 2025-02-16 at 12.28.36 AM
Screenshot 2025-02-16 at 12.28.36 AM1920×982 89.6 KB

6

I think I deleted the contents of the eMMC, because when I boot from an SD card, there is no mmcblk1p1 when I issue the df command. Can you please help me? Thank you.