HELP!!!! Can ANYONE Besides Mistral Boot the CraneBoard From SD-MMC?????????

I remember some time back I was part of technical summit and we demoed Craneboard for it. I am sharing SD creation script which I used. May give some pointers

Also, Can you share your bootargs? May be I can find something obvious in that?

NOTE: Rename file from mksd.sch => mksd.sh.

Thanks,

Vaibhav

Thanks so much Vaibhav!  Looking at your script for creating the boot disk cleared it up for me and I'm now successfully (kind of -- look at my new question!) booting Angstrom from the SD card.  Again, my appreciation!

Fred E.

Hi Frederik,

I am quite new in this area and I am happy to know that you are working on Craneboard.

I bought a craneboard recently and the manual says that it has flashed in bootloader and that it should boot when you just power it on. I tried booting it through USB and I wasnt successful. I tried through a direct power supply as well(http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-D-LINK-CF1505-N-POWER-ADAPTER/dp/B0050MM8SA/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1325632678&sr=8-13).

After pressing the reset button of the craneboard, an LED glows but minicom shows offline and I do not see any logs in minicom. I tried gkterm too. My laptop does not have serial port so I am using a USB to Serial Adapter (http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-26886-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000067RVJ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1328135573&sr=8-3) with a male- female converter(http://www.amazon.com/Female-Mini-Gender-Changer-Coupler/dp/B0016E5X5Q/ref=pd_bxgy_e_img_b) and connect it to Craneboard.

It will be great if you could give me suggestions on how to boot the craneboard.

Thanks,

Nisha

Hi Nisha,

   Yes, for all the hype, lies, and advertising that Mistral and Mr. Crane from TI threw at us, the support for this board really really stinks to high heaven.  It's my belief that this piece of junk has exactly two people using it... you and I. 

Did you look over my complaint posting to Mr. Crane and follow the step-by-step instructions that I gave for booting Angstrom?  It is essential that the serial cable connecting your CraneBoard to your "host" PC is a NULL modem cable (that is, that pins 2 & 3 are reversed at one end of the 9 pin connector).   If you're in the USA, you can go to RadioShack and they have a NULL modem gender-changing plug for about $5.00 that will make a straight-through serial cable into a NULL modem cable.

Make sure also that your minicom is setup for 115500, n, 8, 1 with NO FLOW CONTROL, HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE.  Make sure that you hit Ctrl-A when you first start minicom and set these settings correctly. 

Is your host PC a Windows PC or is it a Linux PC running minicom?  I had very bad luck connecting to HyperTerm on Windows XP.  On HyperTerm, I had to keep going in and out of the program whenever I started up the CraneBoard by plugging in the 5 Volt power supply).  I had tremendous success with minicom on a host laptop running Debian (which I DO NOT RECOMMEND IF YOU WANT TO DO DEVELOPMENT IN ECLIPSE) or the very best and most stable Linux called "Scientific Linux" (makes great Angstrom loads on SD cards).   

I also recommend a USB <--> Serial cable that uses the Prolific PL2303HX chipset in it.  I didn't see that the one you bought was based on the Prolific.....   

When trying to start the CraneBoard's onboard load, you should have the following connections to it (which Mistral and Crane conveniently forgot to tell us in their miserable "instructions"):

0) Make sure the CraneBoard is unplugged at this time and is NOT connected to your host computer's USB port via the little USB "B" plug.

1) Connect the CraneBoard's 9 pin serial port to your laptop using a Prolific PL2303HX chipset based USB <-> serial adapter via a NULL modem serial cable.

2) Start minicom running on your laptop's Debian or Scientific Linux (I had no luck getting minicom to run on Fedora).

3) Set minicom up by hitting Ctrl-A and choosing the proper choice (I believe it was "S" for setup modem port or something) and set it up to 11500 baud, 8 bits, no parity, no hardware or software flow control.

4) Make sure that you're connected to a live 10/100 Ethernet connection when you boot.  Otherwise the CraneBoard will stall for a very long time while booting.  DO NOT USE POWER-OVER-ETHERNET UNTIL YOU'RE SURE THAT YOU CAN BOOT THE CRANEBOARD!!! 

5) Make sure that you have a 5 volt, 2 amp power supply connected to the CraneBoard (Radio Shack sells these at ripoff prices, but their product is very good).  Use a J sized power plug to connect the CraneBoard to your power supply with + in the center hole and - on the outside plug shield.

6) Have a POWERED USB 2.0 hub connected to the CraneBoard (thanks for not bothering to inform us of this necessity either Mr. Crane).  Connect up a USB keyboard and a USB mouse to this POWERED USB 2.0 hub.  Don't connect anything else to it!

7) Now, with minicom running through the NULL-modem cable connection, plug the 5V 2 amp power supply into your CraneBoard.  You should immediately see the boot-sequence beginning on your laptop's minicom.  You can press any key on your laptop in the first 3 seconds of booting to stop the boot sequence which is burned into the NAND.  When you finally are running X-Windows on the CraneBoard, this "boot interruption" is where you'll be setting the resolution for Angstrom to run.  If you stop the boot sequence, simply type the command "boot" at the prompt to completely boot the pre-flashed character-based version of Linux that's burned into the CraneBoard's NAND flash memory.

8) When you see the "login" prompt appear on minicom's screen, you can login as "root" with no password.  Just a side note....Later on, when you run Angstrom, you'll need to assign a password to the root account.  Otherwise, you won't be able to login to the Angstrom GUI.  But, for this text-based version of Linux, you don't need a password.

Nisha, hopefully these instructions will help.  If not, please write back ASAP.  Remember the NULL modem connection and the use of minicom instructions.  Maybe we, as the two first users of this miserably supported board, can get this thing working despite the fact that TI/Mistral is too lazy to check-in here and give us some needed assistance.