The Troubled life | Life with Hawkboard Part 4

Then I understood that uboot is just a bootloader and our hawkboard nand memory contains a built-in uboot and it needs to boot a Linux Kernel, which I need to provide it. The Linux Kernel should be provided with a root filesystem which contains our image processing application along with the necessary files like Linux system files, libraries, gcc, and other barebone things. This is a basic knowledge everyone who works in embedded should know, but since I was somebody who learns stuff when I get stuck rather than watching others and learning, it was a great eye opening knowledge for me at that time.

So now I am ready with a hawkboard connected to my ubuntu running laptop with serial to usb connector, and I can see the uboot command prompt as hawkboard> in my gtkterm screen.

The next logical step is to obtain a Linux Kernel bootable image file that is configured to work in hawkboard i.e. OMAP-L138. Along with the Linux Kernel I need to obtain a root filesystem having the necessary files and folders containing required data that will eventually give me a bash prompt from which I can call my image processing application when the hawkboard is fully ready. All this files and all should be build in such a way that it will run in an ARM system, so I may need to do some cross compilation inside my ubuntu laptop to build the above mentioned files.

Instead of building ARM based Linux Kernel image and Root filesystem in the first trial itself, I decided to use the files recommended by the hawkboard community itself. So that I can see my hawkboard booting and entering into a bash shell, without many troubles and delays that comes as part of using custom made files.

I download Linux Kernel image from

http://hawkboard.googlecode.com/files/uImage_v1

and RAM Disk image (actually a root filesystem which can be stored and loaded into RAM memory, instead of accessing a real root filesystem from a usb drive or sd card, but the bad side is the changes you make to the files in RAM Disk image will not be retained on next loading) from

http://hawkboard.googlecode.com/files/ramdisk_v1.gz

I stored both these files in my ubuntu laptop.

The Troubled life | Life with Hawkboard Part 3 B

But in my foolish mind, I thought it would be some problem with the board that it is not booting into a linux. So I decided to do a Booting uboot over the UART (serial port). I turned off the power supply to the board and changed the position of DIP switch to 1-OFF,2-ON,3-OFF,4-ON.
Downloaded the UART Host Utility from http://www-s.ti.com/sc/techlit/sprab41.zip . unzipped the file in a Windows system. Installed the AISgen_d800k006_Install_v1.7.exe and now I have a UART Host utility available in Program Files\Texas Inst… Note that it is better to install the above tool in a Windows system with .NET framework installed (you can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/net/download.aspx ).

You need to have windows hyperterminal tool for serial port communication before you do anything like booting uboot over UART. Now you need to connect your serial to usb converter into the usb port of your windows running computer. Rigth click the my computer and take the Properties. Click the tab of Advanced Settings and click button “Device Manager”. Device Manger window will open now. click on the arrow left to COM devices, there you can see all the COM peripherals connected to your computer right now. You can also your serial to usb converter and associated COM PORT like COM 19 etc. Open the hyperterminal and go to File>Properties and select COM 19 and click on its properties button and change the Bits per Second to 115200, Data bits to 8, Parity to None, Stop bits to 1, and Flow Control to None. Now click OK.

Now connect the hawkboard to serial to usb converter and power on it. Click the Telephone button on the Hyperterminal and press enter button. you can see a message
BOOT ME.
then click on the telephone hang button(else UART host utility can’t acess the hawkboard).
Then I opened the Uart Host Utility loaded u-boot_uart_ais_v1.bin from http://code.google.com/p/hawkboard/downloads/list as ais file. Selected COM19 and baud rate as 115200. Clicked on the Start button. A lot of messages came in the window and finaly something like (Serial Port): Closing COM19. Then I looked into the hyerterminal and clicked on the telephone button and pressed enter again I saw a “hawkboard>” prompt. Now I thought the board got some serious issues and it is the reason for the above behaviour.

Later after a lot of googling, I found that the problem is that I didn’t put a kernel and root filesystem into to the board to boot it up.