StarterWare 02.00 and Beaglebone boot

Randy Ott

Now that the Beaglebone is shipping, there is probably going to be a lot of new activity around here.

I have a working Beaglebone that boots and runs the supplied Angstrom distribution of Linux without any issues.

Now I am trying to run a stand-alone demo program from the StarterWare examples. I have formatted a uSD card and copied the MLO file located in the StarterWare binary folder for Beaglebone and also the demo.bin file that I renamed "app". The board simply refuses to load the MLO file. The serial port issues "CCCCCCCC" every 10 seconds or so and that's it. I followed the instructions located at http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/AM335X_StarterWare_Booting_And_Flashing and tried 3 different cards. I even went and purchased a new 4G class10 card just in case.

Anyone else tried this? Maybe I'm missing something in the card format?

Any help would be appreciated.

over 13 years ago

0 Baskaran Chidambaram over 13 years ago

TI__Genius 17370 points

Are using A3 version of beaglebone board?

For Host PC are you using windows machine?. Hope you followed the instructions in the link you mentioned to format the uSD card.

0 Randy Ott over 13 years ago in reply to Baskaran Chidambaram

Intellectual 750 points

Yes version A3.

Windows box running XP Pro SP3.

I did find a way to make the card bootable by using a program called Partition Wizard to clone the card that came preloaded with linux. I then erased the Linux files and replaced them with my test files. Finally I resized the FAT partition and removed the Linux parttition. It still boots.

I am thinking that there is something going on with the MBR that prevents the ROM boot from seeing the card. I will dig deeper when I get some time to try to see what's happening.

0 Baskaran Chidambaram over 13 years ago in reply to Randy Ott

TI__Genius 17370 points

Now are you able to boot StarterWare binaries?

We will add a SD card format tool in our next release package (dec end time frame), which will simplify the formatting and copying image steps.

0 Randy Ott over 13 years ago in reply to Baskaran Chidambaram

Intellectual 750 points

Yes, it will boot if the partition is marked as "active". Looks like simply formatting does not do this and the ones I purchased did not have this bit set in the MBR.

0 Valentin Ivanov over 13 years ago in reply to Randy Ott

Intellectual 350 points

Hello,

I am using StarterWare 02.00.00.05 with BeagleBone Rev A3 in Windows 7 64.

I am having the same issue when trying to run an example application (uartEcho). I have used supplied tool to format and copy MLO and app file to a 2GB microSD card.

But all I see is "CCCCCC" in my Putty Window.

Angstrom works fine.

Please advise,

Valentin Ivanov

0 Valentin Ivanov over 13 years ago in reply to Valentin Ivanov

Intellectual 350 points

Ok I have downloaded Active Partition Manager application and was able to run bootloader after marking partition as active. I have another issue now.

UartEcho application doesn't echoing anything. The only string I see in the terminal window is "StarterWare AM335x Boot Loader".

I will start another thread for that issue.

0 Jon Peterson over 12 years ago in reply to Valentin Ivanov

Expert 1760 points

You guys are great. I too couldn't get the StarterWare Demo to run.

The Active Partition Manager solved the problem.

My BeagleBone now runs the demo quite nicely.

Thanks, Jon

0 do minh quoc over 12 years ago in reply to Jon Peterson

Intellectual 500 points

I think there are so many issues about quality of uSD card , you must buy a lot of SD card for test , or you can use NAND flash for bootloader

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StarterWare 02.00 and Beaglebone boot