BeagleBoard-xM

BeagleBoard-xM delivers extra ARM® Cortex-A8 MHz now at 1 GHz and extra memory with 512MB of low-power DDR RAM, enabling hobbyists, innovators and engineers to go beyond their current imagination and be inspired by the BeagleBoard.org community. Designed with the community inputs in mind, this open hardware design improves upon the laptop-like performance and expandability, while keeping at hand-held power levels. Direct connectivity is supported by the on-board four-port hub with 10/100 Ethernet, while maintaining a tiny 3.25" × 3.25" footprint.

The BeagleBoard-xM features:

  • Super-scalar ARM Cortex-A8
  • 512-MB LPDDR RAM
  • High-speed USB 2.0 OTG port optionally powers the board
  • On-board four-port high-speed USB 2.0 hub with 10/100 Ethernet
  • DVI-D (digital computer monitors and HDTVs)
  • S-video (TV out)
  • Stereo audio out/in
  • High-capacity microSD slot and 4-GB microSD card
  • JTAG
  • Camera port

SD Card Creation

  1. At a minimum, you need to create the first partition on an SD card to store the bootloader files and kernel uImage. For the root filesystem you can choose to use either a second partition on the SD card or a USB drive.
  2. The first partition should be FAT16 LBA (partition type 0E), and a size of 128MB is plenty of space for the needed files. Also flag this partition as bootable.
    Format the partition with mkfs.vfat, for example: mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n "bootloader" /dev/mmcblk0p1
  3. If you plan to use the SD card for the root filesystem as well, create a second partition of type Linux filling the rest of the free space, preferably at least 1-2GB.
    Format the partition with mkfs.ext3, for example: mkfs.ext3 -L "rootfs" /dev/mmcblk0p2
  4. If you plan to use a USB drive for the root filesystem, create a first partition on the drive of type Linux using at least 1-2GB.
    Format the partition with mkfs.ext3, for example: mkfs.ext3 -L "rootfs" /dev/sdb1
  5. Download the BeagleBoard bootloader tarball and extract the files onto the first partition of the SD card. These files contain the bootloaders needed to load the kernel. The file MLO needs to be the first file put onto the FAT partition, and extracting the tarball as-is should do this for you. If you have problems getting to U-Boot, re-format and place the files manually.
  6. Download the root filesystem tarball and extract it (as root) to the ext3 partition on either the SD card or the USB drive. It is important to do this as root, as special files need to be created as part of the filesystem that can only be created by root.
  7. Copy /boot/uImage from the ext3 partition to the fat16 partition.
  8. Create a boot.scr file following the instructions below to boot into the system.

Creating a boot.scr

  1. Create a file called bootcmd, and place U-Boot commands in there like a script file. For example:
    setenv bootargs 'console=ttyO2,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootfstype=ext3 rootwait' mmc init fatload mmc 0 0x80300000 uImage bootm 0x80300000 boot
  2. Use mkimage to create the boot.scr file. For example:
    mkimage -A arm -O linux -T script -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n "Beagleboard-xM boot script" -d bootcmd boot.scr
  3. Copy the resulting boot.scr to the fat16 partition on the SD card.

Architecture

ARMv7l Cortex-A8

Processor

TI DM3730 1GHz

RAM

512MB

SD

Micro SD

USB

4

Ethernet

10/100