SD Image (Mac) and Trouble Booting

[garthvader]

Hello,

I want to make sure I absolutely have a good SD imaged card.

I recently received my board and after a few days of waiting for the accessories to come in the mail (including the unexpected fan solution :/) I was able to attempt booting... more times than I'd like. So far I have lost two frustrating evenings to this, so I am hoping someone can help me out...

I have mac and (debian) linux OS. I have tried both the old single image method, and the method described by copying the main image then the separate boot files into the boot partition. The cards all appeared to be made correctly from linux, but this is where I am asking for some confirmation. I would prefer mac advice since using the linux box interferes with work work. Copying 7gb is not fast, and I'd hate to brick a brand new sandisk 32gb class 10 sd by abusing it.

I am using a 5v 2A supply as used on other embedded systems (think beaglebone). I am using a 40mm fan directly above the included heatsink, via soldered j15 and the mounting pads as recommended. I have tried every combination of the three un/attached hardware options using a card setup by both imaging techniques. I also tried disco the fan and running the fan off a 9v battery, just in case the fan had anything to do with it.

Result always the same: Single led for a moment, then a second led (CR8 then CR10). I get a green ethernet light, then orange ethernet light with some blinking. No hdmi activity. When using ethernet cable, no network life from the board shows via my router DHCP client table, or via nmap. (That is the part that is really troubling...)

Is there a method we can recommend to confirm that the SD card is not the issue? Its probably the last thing left...

[9600]

Do you have a different SD card you could try?

Do you have a USB UART — a.k.a. "FTDI cable" — you could connect to the ?

Cheers,

Andrew

[gceline]

The second LED is driven by the Zynq, so the board is waking up, but the fact that you are not getting any ethernet activity is an indication the boot is not happening.

[garthvader]

I have tried two of these sandisk class 10 32g cards, which I bought for the parallella:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009QZ ... UTF8&psc=1

I have only another 8g card available. I will give that a shot and report back. Thanks.

[garthvader]

Actually I had a 16gb kingston card, not 8gb as I thought. Same behavior. I'm not having any problems mounting the disks from other machines. If there is no official way to confirm/deny they are correctly imaged then I can only assume this is not the problem... I use the same methods listed on the create-sdcard page successfully on other devices.

I do not have the USB cable you are referring to, and I'm not dropping anymore money until the thing boots. I may be able to xover to another embedded machine's serial pins but I'll have to restore its sdcard first I find this situation very troubling given the timing and lack of thermal solution etc etc

[garthvader]

attached log. If I am reading it correctly, the device appears to boot. However I have yet to find it on the network or have it display via hdmi :/

[garthvader]

Next steps?

[aolofsson]

I think we have seen this behavior when a headless HDMI FPGA bit stream is used with a linux device tree that assumes a video device. Can you specify exactly which kernel, bitstream, and rootfile system you are using?

[garthvader]

I believe this card is flashed with ubuntu-lxde-14.03.06-p16g1.img . Thanks!

[garthvader]

I just tried the refreshing with the latest-greatest from http://www.parallella.org/create-sdcard/ and externally I have the same behavior. If I have time to resume debugging again tomorrow I will try to grab its log.

Unfortunately, I am approaching the limit of patience with this product. What are your suggested next steps if this cannot be resolved? Thanks.