What BIOS does BeagleBoard uses

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1

Hi,

I am currently documenting myself on the open-source hardware (computers) presently available. My current understanding is that the BeagleBoards are all open-source hardware, however I cannot find mentions of the BIOS part. Side note: I could find that information bit on the Raspberry (http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/8475/what-bios-does-rapsberry-pi-use).

Essentially I was wondering if I would be able to use Libreboot on a BeagleBone Black.

Thank you,

2

Hi,

I am currently documenting myself on the open-source hardware (computers)
presently available. My current understanding is that the BeagleBoards are
all open-source hardware, however I cannot find mentions of the BIOS part.
Side note: I could find that information bit on the Raspberry
(arm - What BIOS does Raspberry Pi use? - Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange).

The am335x used on the bbb contains a small rom based bootloader.
It's smart enough to read a microSD (raw and fat/ext partitions)
(along with usart/usb-slave/etc), but can't init main memory.

The standard boot method for us:

rom boot -> MLO (from: u-boot/spl) -> u-boot.img (from u-boot)

http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot

https://eewiki.net/display/linuxonarm/BeagleBone+Black#BeagleBoneBlack-Bootloader:U-Boot

https://eewiki.net/display/linuxonarm/BeagleBone+Black#BeagleBoneBlack-SetupmicroSDcard

Essentially I was wondering if I would be able to use Libreboot on a
BeagleBone Black.

Go for it, there's a place on the bottom of the pcb where you can
solder a ti-jtag connector.

Good Luck!

Regards,

3

Cool, thank you for the answer Robert! Unfortunately I wouldn’t know how to do this myself.

May I ask you how challenging it would be to release a board that would be compliant with the FSF “Single board computers with no flaw” category (https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers)?

I would be personally be happy to pay $400-$600 for a X15 with 4GB of RAM and compatible with that FSF “category”, I am also sure I am not alone given the interest into the Puri.sm/Librem laptops (that are actually missing the open-source bios and are therefore not recommended by FSF).

Thanks!!

4

It'll never be "no flaw", ti exclusively use SGX for 3d graphics..

Not that we ever actually enable that in our community images.

As of right now it only works on Android/Wayland images..

So there's nothing "we" can do, it's "FSF" reasoning that will never
allow us to be "Single board computers with no flaw"...

Regards,