user LEDs won't turn on and board won't boot

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#1

I’ve got a beagle bone black that used to have debian on it, but it’s been sitting on my desk unpowered for over a year. I recently tried booting it, but the user LEDs won’t turn on; only the power LED will light up. I tried programming the on board flash, and booting from a microSD card, but no luck. Any suggestions? I’ve got tools at work to probe the debug header, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. Thanks!

#2

Using a serial debug cable will give you a better idea of what’s going on. It will not always let you know exactly what the problem is, but based on what you get as output, someone here could give you a better idea what’s happening.

Passed that . . . try flashing this to sdcard, and booting from it.

http://debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz

This is an older image, and I have a good reason as to why you should attempt booting from this. Older eMMC images can interfere with newer sdcard images at boot. This should give you( us ) a better idea what is going on. Typically though, with an older 1st, and 2nd stage boot loader, if you press and hold the boot button at boot. the board should be forced to boot from, and use the 1st, and 2nd stage bootloader from the sd card, instead of attempting to use the boot loaders from the eMC . . .

#3

Hi William,

I tried flashing the eMMC as you suggested, but no luck. The LEDs never turned on, so I just waited a very long time. I’ll work on getting the serial output next.

Thanks,

Bryan

#4

Make sure your serial adapter is 3v3 ttl.

#5

Here is my UART output:

U-Boot SPL 2014.04-00014-g47880f5 (Apr 22 2014 - 13:23:54)
Could not probe the EEPROM; something fundamentally wrong on the I2C bus.
Could not get board ID.
Could not probe the EEPROM; something fundamentally wrong on the I2C bus.
Could not get board ID.
Unknown board, cannot configure pinmux.### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ###

On reset, the same message repeats. I’ll probe the I2C bus and see what I can find.

Bryan

#6

Oh wow! I have an answer. I went to go probe U7, the EEPROM, and discovered that it has fallen off the PCB. All that was left was a single pin dangling on a pad. I can see where the other chip legs used to be soldered on.There must have been a defect during the SMT process.

So my next question is, is there a way to get a programmed EEPROM to fix my BBB? Can I get an RMA? Or should I just buy a new one?

#7

What is the serial number of the board?

Gerald

#8

Is this a circuitco board ?

#9

Serial number is blank. I just see a large white rectangle to the right of “S/N” on the bottom silkscreen.

re: circuitco - I purchased it through Adafruit 2 years ago, so I don’t believe so.

#10

So, I’m pretty sure there is a way to bypass the EEPROM check, and force the correct device tree board file. But I am not sure how to go about doing that. Plus, I’m not sure what else is involved. Maybe Robert can chime in and tell us whether what I’m thinking is a good idea or not ? As uboot has to know some things too . . .

#11

Serial number is on the big white label on the expansion header. Is this the first time you have used the board in two years?

Gerald

#12

There is an image that has that feature, but it's now purpose built to
flash the eMMC from a usb flash drive...

Sorry there really isn't just a image that, just boot to console, if
eeprom is blank anymore...

Regards,

#13

There is an image that has that feature, but it’s now purpose built to
flash the eMMC from a usb flash drive…

Sorry there really isn’t just a image that, just boot to console, if
eeprom is blank anymore…

Regards,

Which implies it is still possible ? What all is involved in doing so, or is it too complicated ?

#14

Thanks for all the quick replies!

text on the header is “0 025 132 9 1 1758 A5C” So I’m gussing S/N is 025132911758

#15

It would have to be this blank image:

http://rcn-ee.com/rootfs/bb.org/testing/2015-11-29/usbflasher/

User would have to reverse this line:

http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Flashing_eMMC

before booting..

Regards,

#16

Sounds like it got knocked off somewhere along the way. If it were missing it would have failed two sets of tests.

Request an RMA and see if it can be repaired (if pads are missing, then it can’t) or buy another board.

Gerald

#17

Cool, I’ll try flashing with the blank image first. If that doesn’t work, I’ll RMA.

It appears to be a SMT process manufacturing defect. There is solder paste on the pads. I can see where the legs were attached, but it doesn’t look like the solder properly re-flowed.

Thanks everyone!

Bryan

#18

The blank image worked great. :slight_smile: Thanks!