unbrick the board

Hi,
I think my board is bricked because I can see only the power LED
turned on. I followed unbricking procedure listed at:
http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleboardRevCValidation

I am using MMC. However, when I press user button and then power the
board, I can see "40V" displayed on minicom. Nothing else. The other
LEDS dont light up at all. Please suggest the fix.

Thanks,
Simran

It sounds as if you have either not formated your card correctly or you have not made the MLO file the first file written to the card. You need to follow the procedure to the letter.

Gerald

I think my board is bricked because I can see only the power LED
turned on. I followed unbricking procedure listed at:
Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

I am using MMC. However, when I press user button and then power the
board, I can see "40V" displayed on minicom. Nothing else. The other
LEDS dont light up at all. Please suggest the fix.

Did you follow the description exactly? Which kind of error do you get
during the process?

With 40V being send on the UART to board doesn't sound totally bricked to
me...
It's just missing some SW in the NAND flash and thereby tries peripheral
booting...

Best regards
  Søren

Has anyone else noted that that Digikey video on setting up an SD card
does NOT include MLO?

I have not. I prefer the tried and true way of doing it that has been used on over 7,000 boards.

Gerald

> It sounds as if you have either not formated your card correctly or
you have
> not made the MLO file the first file written to the card. You need to
follow
> the procedure to the letter.

Has anyone else noted that that Digikey video on setting up an SD card
does NOT include MLO?

You only need the MLO in case you boot from SD. In case you boot from the
NAND (which is default unless/until you destroy the NAND content somehow)
you don't need to have MLO on the SD-card as well...

Best regards
  Søren

I followed SD card formatting procedure from:
http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/LinuxBootDiskFormat
except the last line about Bootloader settings.

Then I copied copied MLO_restore file as MLO and u-boot.bin_autoflash
as u-boot.bin in the first partition of SD card from:
http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/downloads/list

The second partition of SD card was empty.

Then I plugged SD card into beagleboard and while user button was
pressed, powered it up.
The terminal shows "40V" and only the power LED is lit up. Did I miss
any step?

Simran

The correct way to do this is to have only 1 partition as FAT. Do it exactly as described here. http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleboardRevCValidation

Gerald

ok it works now. I was partitioning the SD card from
http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/LinuxBootDiskFormat
But when I used http://selfdestruct.net/misc/usbboot/SP27213.exe , the
board booted fine.

Thanks,
Simran

Glad it worked! We have had a lot of boards returned with NAND issues that took us 30 seconds to fix. I think I now have a little insight into what these people may be doing wrong based on your experience. I will make good use of it!

Thanks!

Gerald

I had similar experience when partitioned in Linux following that link. Specifying FAT16 (0xE instead of 0xC) as partition type and formatting as FAT16 (mkfs.vfat -F 16 instead of mkfs.vfat -F 32) resolved the issue. Rest of the instructions are fine.

Regards,
Pratheesh