bricked BB rev C2

I once had a working BB rev C2... Running Debian. Then I wanted to
test Ubuntu.

Unfortunately I messed it up using these instructions:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu#Upgrade_X-loader_and_U-boot

Is there a (correct and complete) description somewhere to help me get
my BB working again?
I have searched and tested a few descriptions with no luck at all.

I feel like an idiot, TIA
Sid

Boot message looping forever:
40V

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Sep 22 2010 - 16:12:19)
Beagle Rev C1/C2/C3
Reading boot sector
Loading u-boot.bin from mmc

U-Boot 2010.03-dirty (Oct 18 2010 - 11:31:58)

OMAP3530-GP ES3.0, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max clock-600Mhz
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 error.

timed out in wait_for_bb: I2C_STAT=1000
timed out in wait_for_pin: I2C_STAT=0
I2C read: I/O error
Unrecognized expansion board: 0
40V

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Sep 22 2010 - 16:12:19)
Beagle Rev C1/C2/C3
Reading boot sector
Loading u-boot.bin from mmc

U-Boot 2010.03-dirty (Oct 18 2010 - 11:31:58)

OMAP3530-GP ES3.0, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max clock-600Mhz
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 error.

timed out in wait_for_bb: I2C_STAT=1000
timed out in wait_for_pin: I2C_STAT=0
I2C read: I/O error
Unrecognized expansion board: 0

I once had a working BB rev C2... Running Debian. Then I wanted to
test Ubuntu.

Unfortunately I messed it up using these instructions:
BeagleBoardUbuntu - eLinux.org

Is there a (correct and complete) description somewhere to help me get
my BB working again?
I have searched and tested a few descriptions with no luck at all.

http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardRecovery

Philip

I'm using this same web page to help me un-brick a Gumstix Overo FE that I managed to erase nand on. I have not succeeded yet. It won't boot from MMC any more. I think having Kermit installed (ckermit on Ubuntu) is going to be quite important. On Fedora 14, there are no ckermit packages available to install -- I guess because of licensing issues. So I downloaded the source for Kermit 8 but could not get it to compile on my Fedora x86_64 host. Then I downloaded the source for Kermit 9, which is an alpha release, and that compiled okay.

I still have to try again to recover my Gumstix board, and I hope the Kermit 9 binary will help me with that.

Thanks

Bob Cochran

I have tried the MMC recovery procedure described there with a couple
of different SD-cards without any luck.
Could it be that I use SD-cards, not MMC-cards? I have only used SD-
cards (with no problems) in the past.

Is there any reason to expect success using USB recovery or UART
recovery when MMC recovery fail?
Bob (below) seem to be of that opinion.

Thanks
Sid

I believe that "SD cards" and "MMC cards" are the same. It is just a shorthand way of referring to flash cards made by Transcend, Lexar and others.

I'm trying USB and UART recovery procedures because the my Gumstix does not boot from MMC even if offered a correctly formatted SD card. I know the claim is that it will boot from MMC but I suspect NAND has to contain a valid X-Loader for that to work. I think I really clobbered something in NAND for this to happen.

(And yes I'm also the proud owner of two Beagleboards, a Revision C4 and an xM Revision A2.)

Bob

I also forgot to say that I don't know if the procedure for recovering a BeagleBoard has been tested or works. I will find out this week I suppose!

Bob

I know I messed my BB up doing my best to follow these instructions:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu%23Upgrade_X-loader_and_U-boot

So I guess I will try USB and/or UART recovery tomorrow.

I would really like to try Ubuntu on the BB but after all this trouble
I think I will stay with Debian. What do you use?
Sid

Back from a little vacation,

After doing http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu#Upgrade_X-loader_and_U-boot

What exactly is it not or what exactly is it doing?

Regards,

What exactly is it not or what exactly is it doing?

Regards,

--
Robert Nelsonhttp://www.rcn-ee.com/

See below.

Regards,
Sid

Boot message looping forever:
   40V

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Sep 22 2010 - 16:12:19)
Beagle Rev C1/C2/C3
Reading boot sector
Loading u-boot.bin from mmc

U-Boot 2010.03-dirty (Oct 18 2010 - 11:31:58)

OMAP3530-GP ES3.0, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max clock-600Mhz
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 error.

timed out in wait_for_bb: I2C_STAT=1000
timed out in wait_for_pin: I2C_STAT=0
I2C read: I/O error
Unrecognized expansion board: 0
   40V

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.4.4ss (Sep 22 2010 - 16:12:19)
Beagle Rev C1/C2/C3
Reading boot sector
Loading u-boot.bin from mmc

U-Boot 2010.03-dirty (Oct 18 2010 - 11:31:58)

OMAP3530-GP ES3.0, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max clock-600Mhz
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 error.

timed out in wait_for_bb: I2C_STAT=1000
timed out in wait_for_pin: I2C_STAT=0
I2C read: I/O error
Unrecognized expansion board: 0

Powering by 5 Volts?

can you get a u-boot prompt or does it reset before then?

Regards,

Powered by 5V, as always.

No prompt, just the message above repeated (I think) until we run out
of electricity.

Thanks,
Sid

Very strange, that it keeps repeating... I've never seen that on any
of my Bx/Cx boards... Does holding down the user button still run the
user.scr script?

If it does, I'd try to force a full nand erase with the boot script.

In that flash-omap folder you cloned with git, there is a reset.cmd
file, on line 11:

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/flash-omap/blob/master/reset.cmd#L11

I'd remove the 0 and 80,000 arguments so it's only "nand erase" this
will erase your nand completely

Regards,

No, the script is not run, it's just the sequence I described above.

One strange thing though. I checked the SD card. It's a SanDisk 4GB
card.
I found that the geometry (C/H/S) was 122/62/1023 instead of the
required 255/63/xxx. My first thought was that I forgot to set the
geometry and that this was the stupid reason for me spending time
getting nothing done. I changed it to 255/63/482 and ran ./mk_mmc.sh --
mmc /dev/sdb again. To my (big) surprise the geometry was back to
122/62/1023.

I must say two things:
I'm completely clueless about why and if the 255/63/xxxx geometry is
required.
In my world we left C/H/S geometry a quarter of a century ago so I
don't understand why it has come back to haunt me now.

Could this geometry business be the problem?

Regards,
Sid

The C/H/S stuff was for an old bug in x-loader that has now since been
fixed in (1.44)...

Since it keeps reseting with the current x-loader/u-boot combo, we
might have to get creative..

Use the x-loader/mlo from here:
http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleboardRevCValidationv2

(it'll need the C/H/S stuff..) and reconstruct the mmc card.. if you
can get into u-boot with that do a full nand erase...

Regards,

The C/H/S stuff was for an old bug in x-loader that has now since been
fixed in (1.44)...

Since it keeps reseting with the current x-loader/u-boot combo, we
might have to get creative..

Use the x-loader/mlo from here:Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

(it'll need the C/H/S stuff..) and reconstruct the mmc card.. if you
can get into u-boot with that do a full nand erase...

Regards,

--
Robert Nelsonhttp://www.rcn-ee.com/

Sorry but I fail to find any x-loader/mlo at that location.

Regards,
Sid

That page is not overly helpful in finding the correct x-loader file. If you click on the downloads tab, it’ll take you to http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/downloads/list and there are two copies of the xloader program available for download. They are both named MLO because that’s the name that would be recognized from an SD card.

http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/downloads/detail?name=MLO_revc_v3&can=2&q= and http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/downloads/detail?name=x-load_revc_v3.bin.ift&can=2&q= I belive will get you the same binary, which is the latest revision of the xloader code for the C4 boards.

Yeap, the original one was the wrong one..

Use this one.. http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleboardRevC3Validation

What we are trying to do is boot with an ancient mlo/u-boot combo to
help get you to a usable u-boot prompt so you can clean up the whole
nand..

Regards,

Thank you all, but no reason to celebrate.

I tried the procedure at http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleboardRevC3Validation.
No luck.

I tried also UART recovery at http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardRecovery:
# ./pserial -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -f x-load.bin
Waiting For Device ASIC ID: Press Ctrl+C to stop
ASIC ID Detected.
Sending 2ndFile:
Downloading file: 100.000% completed(12700/12700 bytes)
File download completed.
# ./ukermit -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -f u-boot.bin
Failed after 4 retries in sequence 0 - success send = 0 bytes
Data transmit failed

I had exactly the same experience with UART recovery efforts on my Gumstix Overo. Since then I compiled an alpha version of Kermit 9.0 and have yet to try again with the recovery effort.

I am not sure what cables need to be connected where. My problem might be one of physical cabling. For example, is the console connector on a Gumstix Summit expansion board the same as an RS232 tty? It looks like it, but I might be wrong. I wish I could see a photograph or diagrams and instructions for the cabling needed for a successful recovery.

I should have time soon to go back to trying to recover my Overo's NAND.

Bob Cochran

If you get those messages I think it's pretty clear that it's the
correct serial port since pserial seem to recognize the board and
download the first file.
But on the other hand, what do I know...

This is an interesting experience. I think it's the first time I have
managed to break something using only software and not being able to
fix it. Not good. Usually when something get broken using software
it's no problem downloading a new image using a serial bootloader or
when things are really primitive by using a JTAG cable.

I have to take a break from trying to fix the BB until next year. We
have to celebrate Mammon and then it's some urgent CAN business to
attend to.

Merry whatever and happy something else,
Sid