BeagleBone Black

[Tim Kientzle]

On Apr 27, 2013, at 11:47 PM, Tim Kientzle wrote:

>> I have mine now but I think that the USB drivers need an update.  It's not recognized when
>> I plug it in.  The last update to uftdi on my box is April 15th.  I'll go check if there's a newer one
>> and/or if I need to add a value for the new board.
> 
> Just got mine a few minutes ago…
> 
> Apparently, the BeagleBone Black lacks the built-in serial to USB adapter that the original BeagleBone had.  Serial is available on a 6-pin header that should work with common 3.3v serial-to-USB adapters.  I'll try it in the morning.

The 4-pin adapter I got from Adafruit for use with Raspberry Pi seems
to work just fine, though the CircuitCo documentation has the instructions
wrong.  It should be:
   Black => Pin 1
   Green => Pin 4
   White => Pin 5

> It looks like the 2GB Flash takes the form of an eMMC connected to the second MMC interface.  So it should be straightforward to add support for it.  With 8-bit support, it should be a lot faster than a uSD card.  We'll see.

Harumph.  Looks like it always boots initially from the eMMC and
U-Boot then looks at the boot switch to decide whether to continue
from eMMC or uSD.

This sucks:  the U-Boot on the eMMC doesn't have ELF support
nor API support so can't load and boot ubldr.

Short version:  The existing FreeBSD images for BeagleBone
won't work as-is.  At a minimum, we'll have to replace the U-Boot
on the eMMC with one that has ELF and API enabled.    I guess
I'll be spending more quality time with U-Boot.  :-/

Tim