here's a page i threw together in a few minutes:
http://www.crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/BeagleBoard_U-Boot
anything else worth adding to that? it has to be commands that can be
run strictly from u-boot to examine properties of your BB.
rday
p.s. which command can i use to examine the filesystem layout of
flash? fatls? what's the <interface> value i'd use?
Robert P. J. Day wrote:
here's a page i threw together in a few minutes:
Why don't you add this to eLinux wiki? This would help to avoid scattered information.
Best regards
Dirk
i wasn't sure this is the sort of thing that a lot of others would
be interested in. my motivation is documenting what i might use as
part of a presentation at ontario linux fest this fall:
i checked and i didn't see a lot of interest in precisely this sort
of content, but i can move it there if you think it's worth it.
rday
actually, let me reconsider that and i'll tell you why. at the
moment, BB info *is* kind of scattered all over the place, so i wanted
to -- for my own personal benefit and for a few friends -- tighten it
up a bit. and i wanted to do that from the perspective of someone who
just unwrapped a new BB and is asking themselves, "ok, now what?"
because, while that information exists, it's not in the most
convenient location or format.
for instance, how does one connect to the serial console? here's
the answer:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners#Serial_connection
and while that information is correct, it's *way* too verbose.
i think it's reasonable to assume that, if someone is technical
enough to play with a BB, they're technical enough to not need a
keystroke-by-keystroke walkthrough of how to configure minicom. most
of that information can be reduced to something like:
"configure whatever comm program you want (minicom, for instance)
with 115200,8N1 with no flow control whatsoever," with something
thrown in to help them figure out their device file. that's it --
that's all you need to know. there's no real need to have pages of
minicom screen shots.
so i'll give this a bit more thought.
rday
Robert P. J. Day wrote:
Robert P. J. Day wrote:
here's a page i threw together in a few minutes:
Why don't you add this to eLinux wiki? This would help to avoid
scattered information.actually, let me reconsider that and i'll tell you why. at the
moment, BB info *is* kind of scattered all over the place, so i wanted
to -- for my own personal benefit and for a few friends -- tighten it
up a bit. and i wanted to do that from the perspective of someone who
just unwrapped a new BB and is asking themselves, "ok, now what?"
because, while that information exists, it's not in the most
convenient location or format.
So feel free to improve it, see below. But please not by more scattering.
for instance, how does one connect to the serial console? here's
the answer:BeagleBoardBeginners - eLinux.org
and while that information is correct, it's *way* too verbose.
i think it's reasonable to assume that, if someone is technical
enough to play with a BB, they're technical enough to not need a
keystroke-by-keystroke walkthrough of how to configure minicom. most
of that information can be reduced to something like:"configure whatever comm program you want (minicom, for instance)
with 115200,8N1 with no flow control whatsoever," with something
thrown in to help them figure out their device file. that's it --
that's all you need to know. there's no real need to have pages of
minicom screen shots.
While I agree that for a lot of people '115200,8N1 with no flow control' is sufficient, I think this last sentence isn't ok. Somebody spent some time to create this info, so most probably there is some need. Different people might have different information need. That's fine and doesn't hurt. But it's wrong to assume that some special info is *not* needed.
so i'll give this a bit more thought.
There is always room to improve pages. I think improving existing (known location to check for) pages is better than creating new ones (at other locations). Taking your example (BeagleBoardBeginners page above), why not split it in into two sections, a short expert and an (existing) verbose newbie one? Everybody might have other need for information, but we should try to keep it at one location. At least at a limited number of known locations. The main locations I know at the moment are Google Beagle wiki, eLinux wiki and TI's OMAP/DaVinci wiki. And for my personal taste this are already too many. But most probably this can't be changed any more 
Best regards
Dirk
<pedantic> So put it in the u-boot wiki, not the elinux wiki</pendantic>
I have no strong opinion on the matter, though.
regards,
Koen
Sorry for this late reply on the topic, as I've slipped behind a
couple weeks and am constantly playing catch-up here...
Robert P. J. Day wrote:
Robert P. J. Day wrote:
here's a page i threw together in a few minutes:
Why don't you add this to eLinux wiki? This would help to avoid
scattered information.actually, let me reconsider that and i'll tell you why. at the
moment, BB info *is* kind of scattered all over the place, so i wanted
to -- for my own personal benefit and for a few friends -- tighten it
up a bit. and i wanted to do that from the perspective of someone who
just unwrapped a new BB and is asking themselves, "ok, now what?"
because, while that information exists, it's not in the most
convenient location or format.So feel free to improve it, see below. But please not by more scattering.
<pedantic> So put it in the u-boot wiki, not the elinux wiki</pendantic>
I have no strong opinion on the matter, though.
regards,
Koen
By all means... please do add the information to the wiki. Even if
any/much of it needs refining and reorganization, that can come
later/sooner. No beagle-related info should be considered "too good"
for the wiki...
When I was getting started, I wanted to learn about the whole boot
sequence and what the heck all the new terms were: MLO, u-boot,
x-loader. I have a better idea now, but this involved reading this
list for weeks with 50+ mails per day before the topic came up in
various posts and was explained with any clarity.
I won't get into how the wiki could better be arranged, as that's for
a different topic, but certainly the info should be in there somewhere
(perhaps add a new page for the info you have and a one-liner with a
link to it on the "beginners" page).
Sorry for this late reply on the topic, as I've slipped behind a
couple weeks and am constantly playing catch-up here...
welcome to lots of peoples' world. 
By all means... please do add the information to the wiki. Even if
any/much of it needs refining and reorganization, that can come
later/sooner. No beagle-related info should be considered "too
good" for the wiki...When I was getting started, I wanted to learn about the whole boot
sequence and what the heck all the new terms were: MLO, u-boot,
x-loader. I have a better idea now, but this involved reading this
list for weeks with 50+ mails per day before the topic came up in
various posts and was explained with any clarity.I won't get into how the wiki could better be arranged, as that's
for a different topic, but certainly the info should be in there
somewhere (perhaps add a new page for the info you have and a
one-liner with a link to it on the "beginners" page).
i never suggested that the info wasn't "in there", only that it's
sometimes (often?) very hard to track down. mostly, i wanted to
collect the information i needed to explain how to just get the BB
working *out of the box*, including all the things that could go
wrong (which i think is the most overlooked thing when it comes to
writing up online docs).
by way of explanation, i've spent a lot of years writing linux
courseware and teaching that (and other peoples' courseware), and for
a class to work well, stuff has to *work*. exactly the way it's
explained in the courseware manual.
i spent a lot of time testing labs, and exercises, to make darned
sure that stuff did what it was supposed to do, because there's
nothing more frustrating to a student than typing *exactly* what the
manual says, and having it fail, and having the instructor come over
to some poor sap's terminal, look at it, get a confused look and say,
"hmmmmm ... *that* wasn't supposed to happen." that really kills
classroom productivity.
so it's why i started my beagleboard wiki -- to try to document at
least the first part of the process in such a way that, as long as
someone follows the instructions, they *will* get a working BB. and
if they don't, then i screwed up and should fix what i wrote.
anyway, sorry about rambling on -- it's a bad habit. now i'm
going back to rewrite the section on getting android to run.
rday