PANDABOARD Booting

Question

I have a PandaBoard and I do not, yet, have a SD/SDHC card reader to create an image for the board yet.

Most of the information on the pandaboard.org web site walks through the creation of an SD card image and this link says it's not possible to boot-strap the board with a USB stick.

Yet, this pandaboard reference manual, page 22, seems to indicate the boot order is to first try USB and then MMC/SD.

Page 21 reads, in part:

"The lower six inputs, SYSBOOT[5:0] determine the type and order of memory or peripheral booting. SYSBOOT[5] determines whether memory or peripheral booting is preferred. The SYSBOOT definitions may be found in the OMAP4430 TRM, but are included here for convenience. See Table 2 on page 22 for the SYSBOOT definitions for peripheral preferred booting, and Table 3 on page 23 for memory preferred booting SYSBOOT definitions. The shaded row in Table 2 is the default configuration of the PandaBoard. "

The shaded row, in case you can't open the PDF at the link, lists USB first and them MMC second.

So can anyone help me out? Is there anyway to boot from a USB stick?

Answer 1

If you look at section 2.15 in the manual it describes how there are two USB interfaces. The 'USB' referred to in the table is the mini-AB connector J18, (so presumably you could provide a boot source here, somehow), it is not the 12-wire ULPI interface which provides the peripheral USB ports (where you could plug in a memory stick.)