Board Dead?

[achliopa]

Hi,

I am facing some issues with my board I have a Thunder Rev.A board
(bought nov.2009)

I copied the Android Image on a card and booted the board.
Installation finished but when I rebooted the system (removing the
card)
the booting process got stuck when it was displaying the android logo
(silver letters)
I rebooted and tried to reinstall from the sdcard. The installation
got stuck on the "Copying Android Files". I rebooted and from that
point
the board doesn't boot even with an sdcard in place (even the terminal
doesn't show anything. only one character "0xFF" comes when I connect
the device ).

Is there a way to fix it? My board doesn't have the userbutton1 (is
not populated in Rev.A).


I am looking forward for a reply that might help me solve the issue.

achli

[Greg Hamilton]

I hit reset immediately after starting to boot from an SD card with an Android install image. I must have interrupted it in the middle of erasing or writing the NAND as the device was bricked. 

The default boot order is NAND -> USB -> UART -> MMC so if the NAND is hosed the device won't boot. Holding the user button at power on changes the boot order to USB -> UART -> MMC -> NAND. (http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardRecovery).

My board has the user button. By hoIding it at power up I was able to bypass the NAND and boot directly from an SD card, re-installing Android and restoring the NAND in the process.