I've got a B5 board with a working Angstrom 20080823 dual partitioned
SD setup and I've seen no console information showing the USER button
doing anything in the boot sequence.
To boot the SD I set this in the console environment:
setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit;fatload mmc 0 0x80300000 uImage;fatload mmc 0
0x81600000;bootm 0x80300000';
and then this line from the Angstrom README.txt file which also saves
all the env stuff to NAND:
setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/
mmcblk0p2 rootdelay=2 rootfstype=ext3 video=omapfb:vram:2M,vram:4M' ;
saveenv ; boot
My Beagleboard now boots right into Angstrom from the SD card after a
reset or power-on.
Here's the README.txt file I was mentioning:
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/README.txt
As far as the console not taking your input, it is probably either
your terminal settings or the RX line on your cable is a problem so
the Beagleboard Rs232 isn't receiving your outgoing terminal data.