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Sporatic boot problems with several Lightcrafter EVM

Hi everybody,

We encountering sporadic boot problems where the projector stops continuing the boot process at the last splash image. Most often it recovers after power cycling it a couple of times. We have the latest firmware installed and it boots from NAND. Most often that seems to happen when the projector was warmed up already and when its power cycled it seems to hang. Might this be related to a temperature check within the boot sequence? Any idea how this can be resolved or at least debugged?


Erik

  • Hi Erik,

    Have you captured the UART log when the LightCrafter is booting up? If not, could you do this and when it fails, reply to this thread with that log?

    Thanks,
    Clinton
  • Thanks Clinton,
    I have not captured the log, will try next time it happens, but will have to disassemble the unit to have access to the port.
    I will get back to you with the log file soon

    Erik
  • Hi Clinton,
    I finally have a log when the boot problem happens:
    This is the only thing displayed:

    ----------------------------

    LightCrafter - NAND Boot

    ----------------------------

    Looped continuously…

    Frozed at last boot screen.

    Is version 5 the latest DM365 firmware?

    Has the issue in this article been resolved?
    www.ti.com/.../dlpt003.pdf

    Thanks for your help
    Erik
  • Hi Clinton,

    any further idea what can be done or should we plan to return those units?

    Erik

  • Erik, based on experience with our derivative products I would suggest following TI's procedure to reflash the NAND by booting with an SD card with the 5.0 version of the DM365 code.  (If you can look at the UART output while you do this you'll be able to tell if the projector is still hanging due to a hardware failure.)  On rare occasions the NAND can be corrupted if power is unstable or removed while the projector is initializing and this may have happened in your case.  If after reflashing the NAND you still get no boot and a truncated UART stream then most likely you have a hardware failure.

  • Thanks Layne,

    we will try to reflash the NAND.

    But would that possibly be a fix for sporadic boot problems? It boots most of the time, but especially when it has been on for a while it seems to be more likely that hanging on rebooting happens. 

    Can you elaborate whether the problem stated in the TI document has been fixed?

    Erik

  • Erik, I apologize for forgetting this was an intermittent problem to begin with.  More likely explanations then are a susceptibility to internal noise on the system board at power up, or intermittent connection of the DM365 due to heating.  

    It is my understanding the boot problem cited by TI in their technical advisory was fixed by the 3.0 software package release.  If you are already running the latest versions then PLL hang is not a likely root cause.

    - Layne