Questions about an old[ish] BBB - A6A

[Chris Green]

I have a couple of fairly old BeagleBone Blacks, both version A6A with
2Gb emmc. I have a couple of questions:-

Will a 16Gb microSD card work OK (or is it more to do with the
version/type of the card)?

Is there any advantage to copying the OS to the emmc? I.e. is it
faster than using the SD card?

--
Chris Green
·

[Robert Nelson]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 9:32 AM Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:
>
> I have a couple of fairly old BeagleBone Blacks, both version A6A with
> 2Gb emmc. I have a couple of questions:-
>
> Will a 16Gb microSD card work OK (or is it more to do with the
> version/type of the card)?

Unless the microSD are "fake", they will work fine..

> Is there any advantage to copying the OS to the emmc? I.e. is it
> faster than using the SD card?

For your boards installed on your boat, the biggest advantage to
copying a new OS to the eMMC is to remove that ancient image from the
eMMC, that's been blocking your upgrade path for the last 2 years.

"faster" it depends.. The eMMC is an 8-bit interface, while the
microSD is 4-bit interface... You can "buy" faster microSD, that even
with the limited 4-bit interface that are faster than the eMMC
installed...

Regards,

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

[Chris Green]

Robert Nelson <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 9:32 AM Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:
> >
> > I have a couple of fairly old BeagleBone Blacks, both version A6A with
> > 2Gb emmc. I have a couple of questions:-
> >
> > Will a 16Gb microSD card work OK (or is it more to do with the
> > version/type of the card)?
>
> Unless the microSD are "fake", they will work fine..
>

OK, good.

> > Is there any advantage to copying the OS to the emmc? I.e. is it
> > faster than using the SD card?
>
> For your boards installed on your boat, the biggest advantage to
> copying a new OS to the eMMC is to remove that ancient image from the
> eMMC, that's been blocking your upgrade path for the last 2 years.
>

I'm actually currently installing Ubuntu 18.04 on one of these A6A
BBBs, it seems to be going OK after a slight hiccough due to just one
corrupt executable.

It seems that one can even run Ubuntu's "do-release-upgrade" to move
to newer releases, I'm trying this at this very moment on the BBB
where I have Ubuntu 18.04 installed. I have a fast[ish] internet
connection here at home so it's not too slow.

> "faster" it depends.. The eMMC is an 8-bit interface, while the
> microSD is 4-bit interface... You can "buy" faster microSD, that even
> with the limited 4-bit interface that are faster than the eMMC
> installed...
>

OK, so it's down to the quality/speed of the microSD really. Given
that and the fact that speed doesn't really matter all that much for
the things I'm using the BBB for I may as well stick with running from
the SD card.

Thanks for the (as always useful) replies Robert.

--
Chris Green
·

[Chris Green]

Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:

> Robert Nelson <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > For your boards installed on your boat, the biggest advantage to
> > copying a new OS to the eMMC is to remove that ancient image from the
> > eMMC, that's been blocking your upgrade path for the last 2 years.
> >
> I'm actually currently installing Ubuntu 18.04 on one of these A6A
> BBBs, it seems to be going OK after a slight hiccough due to just one
> corrupt executable.
>
> It seems that one can even run Ubuntu's "do-release-upgrade" to move
> to newer releases, I'm trying this at this very moment on the BBB
> where I have Ubuntu 18.04 installed. I have a fast[ish] internet
> connection here at home so it's not too slow.
>

It worked too! :-) So I now have Ubuntu 19.04 installed on my BBB:-

ubuntu@arm:~$ more /etc/issue.net
Ubuntu 19.04
ubuntu@arm:~$ uname -a
Linux arm 4.14.108-ti-r104 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Apr 9 18:45:06 UTC 2019 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux
ubuntu@arm:~$


--
Chris Green
·