trouble flashing the eMMC on BeagleBone AI

[akashj...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Tried the following steps to flash the BB AI eMMC with the Buster upgrade available at:

https://beagleboard.org/latest-images

as below:

Buster IoT TIDL (without graphical desktop and with machine learning acceleration tools) for BeagleBone AI on-board eMMC flashing via microSD card

• AM5729 Debian 10.3 2020-04-06 16GB eMMC IoT TIDL Flasher image for BeagleBone AI - more info - sha256sum: 1f1eb317e979712b20c4119d63926eb0fc626ace1909f174bc973d915240ebe1

Steps followed were:

1. Donwload the am57xx-eMMC-flasher-debian-10.3-iot-tidl-armhf-2020-04-06-6gb.img.xz zipped file from the above mentioned link.

2. Unzip to obtain the image file (.img) and copy the same to an SD card.

3. With the BB-AI powered down, plug in the SD card.

4. Hold the reset s/w and plug in the USB C-type cable to power on the board, release the reset s/w after 5-7s.

**Nothing happens hereafter, NO ONBOARD LEDs FLASH UP, just the temperature shoots up**

5. Removed the USB C-type cable after 90mins, and the older version in the onboard eMMC seems corrupted.

Could someone please guide through where we went wrong?

Thanks.

[Robert Nelson]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 8:59 AM <akashj...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Tried the following steps to flash the BB AI eMMC with the Buster upgrade available at:
>
> https://beagleboard.org/latest-images
>
> as below:
>
> Buster IoT TIDL (without graphical desktop and with machine learning acceleration tools) for BeagleBone AI on-board eMMC flashing via microSD card
>
> AM5729 Debian 10.3 2020-04-06 16GB eMMC IoT TIDL Flasher image for BeagleBone AI - more info - sha256sum: 1f1eb317e979712b20c4119d63926eb0fc626ace1909f174bc973d915240ebe1
>
> Steps followed were:
> 1. Donwload the am57xx-eMMC-flasher-debian-10.3-iot-tidl-armhf-2020-04-06-6gb.img.xz zipped file from the above mentioned link.
> 2. Unzip to obtain the image file (.img) and copy the same to an SD card.

Please just use "etcher.io" https://www.balena.io/etcher/ Some of the
older windows tools have been reported broken and seem to corrupt the
installed image..

> 3. With the BB-AI powered down, plug in the SD card.
> 4. Hold the reset s/w and plug in the USB C-type cable to power on the board, release the reset s/w after 5-7s.
> **Nothing happens hereafter, NO ONBOARD LEDs FLASH UP, just the temperature shoots up**

on the BBAI you don't need to worry about the push button..

> 5. Removed the USB C-type cable after 90mins, and the older version in the onboard eMMC seems corrupted.
>
> Could someone please guide through where we went wrong?

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 00:06:10 -0700 (PDT), in
gmane.comp.hardware.beagleboard.user
akashjn.intel-Re5J...@public.gmane.org wrote:

>1. Donwload the
>*am57xx-eMMC-flasher-debian-10.3-iot-tidl-armhf-2020-04-06-6gb.img.xz*

>zipped file from the above mentioned link.

>2. Unzip to obtain the image file (*.img*) and copy the same to an SD card.

HOW did you do the copying?

It sounds very much like you put the .img file onto the native SD card
format. This is NOT correct.

Balena Etcher is the currently preferred image writer, and it is smart
enough that you don't even have to extract the .img file from the
compressed .xz archive. (The former recommendation -- for Windows only --
was Win32 Disk Imager, but it requires you to first extract the .img; The
advantage of Win32 Disk Imager is that it can also go the other direction,
creating an .img file from an SD card. Etcher is write only.)

>3. With the BB-AI powered down, plug in the SD card.
>4. Hold the reset s/w and plug in the USB C-type cable to power on the
>board, release the reset s/w after 5-7s.

None of the recent Beagles requires a button to be held down for this.
Old Beaglebone Blacks required one to hold down the /boot select/ button
(which is different from the reset button) to force the device to read the
u-Boot image from the SD card. Recent stuff has a u-Boot that is smart
enough to transition to the SD card if it detects one.


FYI: I never bother with the "flasher" images. I start with the
non-flasher and verify that it will boot, and allow me to do any
customizations. THEN I edit the (from memory, so may have the name wrong)
/boot/uEnv.txt file to activate the flasher script (last line in the file
as I recall) and reboot the device to flash it.

Also, make sure you have a good power supply -- some USB ports may not
provide enough current for reliable flashing.


--
Dennis L Bieber

[Akash Jain]

Thanks Robert. Seems I was doing something very basic very wrong. The solution worked.

[Akash Jain]

Thankyou Dennis. This detailed step by step solution was very helpful.