I don't know enough about the BBB U-Boot to say for sure, but given
the issues you're having, I'd try to isolate what's wrong as early as
possible:
1) Verify your boot loader is actually running by toggling a GPIO or
perform some other externally visible activity *IMMEDIATELY* after the
boot loader code is launched. In other words, in the MLO code, before
things like SDRAM are available.
2) Once you know you can actually run code, verify the SDRAM is being
properly initialized and can be successfully accessed. You can likely
use one of the other UART ports for some diagnostics here, but
toggling GPIO pins or LEDs for status is always a fall-back.
3) Make sure the interface to whatever storage you're using (uSD
card?) is actually working.
4) At this point, you should be able to proceed with development
mostly as normal until you get the boot loader working properly and/or
figure out what's wrong with the board (other than the missing EEPROM).
...or you could just try debugging from reset using JTAG, but I'm a
hardware guy so I tend to shy away from most of the SW debugging
tools. Unless I'm really desperate, they tend to take more time for
me to setup than they save in debugging. But if you're already
working in an environment that supports the JTAG debugger, this might
be easier for you.
Also, if you've got schematics, double-check the settings on the boot
pins, both in the schematic and on the physical board. There should
be pull-up and/or pull-down resistors to set the mode. If there were
issues populating the board, that could be messing with your intended
boot mode and you'll never get anything to work.
Good luck!
--
Charles Steinkuehler
cha...@steinkuehler.net