Beagleboard firmware
Martin Avison (27) 1417 posts |
I have been trying to update my BeagleBoard XM to a recent ROM so I can try out the EDID changes which work so well on the RPi. Unfortunately, after replacing the ROM, it fails to boot. I thought it would be easy to first check to see if it had the latest firmware … wrong! I followed Documents → OMAP 3 port → Starting from nothing links and then tried the following links on that page: Beagle Board Diagnostic Tools and Procedure: leads to a Google Code page on Netsurf, or a 404 not found on Firefox. The XML page just leads to a directory which contains the following two links. MLO: downloaded that from http://beagleboard-validation.s3.amazonaws.com/deploy/201008201549/sd/MLO but it contains text string… U-Boot: downloaded that from http://-validation.s3.amazonaws.com/deploy/201008201549/sd/u-boot.bin but it contains text string… My conclusions are that the links lead to old versions, and I am already using newer versions (and I am unsure where they came from). Are there any later versions which have any effect? I vaguely remember that BB firmware filenames had to be in upper case, and they had to be created in a specific order. However, I can find to references to either, so am I imagining things? |
Frederick Bambrough (1372) 817 posts |
The order I load in (though I suspect only MLO matters) is; MLO, U-BOOT.BIN, BOOT.SCR, UENV.TXT, RISCOS – all in caps. Timestamp on MLO is 08 Nov 2011. Came with revision C board. |
Martin Avison (27) 1417 posts |
Why do you think MLO has to be first?
The file timestamp reflects when it was written (extracted, downloaded, etc) not the version date. What is the X-Loader string somewhere in the file? |
Rick Murray (539) 13400 posts |
You can pick up the latest versions here: http://downloads.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/ The “plain” files should either redirect or give the name of the ones with date suffix. Looks like December 2011? As for why MLO should be first: Now you must copy MLO, u-boot.bin and uImage into the first partition (the FAT32 one) of your SD card. Do it in this strict order, since MLO must be in the first sectors of the card. – as written at http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners |
Rick Murray (539) 13400 posts |
This, of course, should be a timely warning of the risks of “oh, it’s on the internet”, because when websites change, stop working (angstrom distribution is chock full of 404s now!), or go away … all those resources cease to exist. :-/ |
Andrew Rawnsley (492) 1405 posts |
Just a cautionary comment – most higher-resolution EDID modes will require high pixel clock rates, which is a problem for Beagleboards. You’ll generally be much better off with a custom-produced MDF. Basically, you’ll be lucky to get 1280×1024 via EDID, whereas a decent MDF will give up to 1080p depending on monitor. |
Steffen Huber (91) 1945 posts |
IIRC, all monitors I have tried that supported 24/25/30Hz also reported those modes via EDID. |
Frederick Bambrough (1372) 817 posts |
Because that’s what’s in the note I wrote to myself way back. The wetware lacks backup.
Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.5.0 (Mar 27 2011 – 17:37:56) I think this is the thread you were looking for. |
Martin Avison (27) 1417 posts |
Thanks for all the replies. The situation regarding BeagleBoard firmware is certainly very confusing. There is lots of out of date informaation out there, and many dead links. When I get chance I will do some more investigation. Meanwhile, as there were no replies saying that I needed some new firmware for newer ROms, I went back to square one and restored an SD card which worked on a BeagleBoard. Then I copied a recent ROM into it (much as I did last time) … but this time it worked fine! So I must have done something wrong when I did it before. |