Apart from the BeagleBoard itself, you will need:
Let’s go through some of those items in a bit more detail.
The BeagleBoard is shipped without any power supply. It requires a regulated 5 volts DC input, and has a barrel connector of the most common size. The BeagleBoard itself will consume something like 1 amp, but may need more in some circumstances, most notably at start-up. You really don’t want to give it less than a 2 amp supply. You are going to connect a minimum of 3 USB devices (keyboard, mouse, memory stick), so you’re going to need a hub; the devices plus the hub will need power. Best is if the hub has its own mains power supply, so it won’t need power from the BeagleBoard; but if you can’t power the hub separately, you’ll need to take that power from the BeagleBoard, which means up to another half an amp that the power supply must give.
Realistically, you will probably want your BeagleBoard on your network, so you’re going to want a USB Ethernet dongle. This means 4 ports of your hub are going to be used. If you use a 4 port USB hub, that precludes the possibility of connecting anything else via USB, which is why I suggest that a 7 port hub is preferable. Otherwise you should be able to cascade two 4 port hubs (but that means yet another power supply…) One USB Ethernet dongle that I have found to work is the Lindy USB 2.0 Fast Ethernet Adaptor although you may be able to get it a bit cheaper elsewhere.
The monitor with digital input is a must. The BeagleBoard simply doesn’t have any analogue video output apart from S-video, which is only of limited resolution. The digital video output is unencrypted HDMI, which is electrically compatible with DVI-D. It must be admitted that DVI is pretty confusing; if you’re not sure about it, there are plenty of places to look on the Internet. Wikipedia’s entry is a good start. DVI-D is digital (and suitable); DVI-A is analogue (therefore not suitable); DVI-I supports both digital and analogue feeds, and is therefore suitable. Make sure you have a cable and adaptor system that goes from BeagleBoard’s HDMI socket to the monitor. I got caught when I bought my new monitor, because it didn’t have a socket and a free cable; instead it has a captive cable terminated in a DVI-I plug. Thus I needed an HDMI to DVI adaptor. Most of these adaptors are HDMI to DVI-D. A DVI-I plug won’t fit into a DVI-D socket! Fortunately there are a few HDMI to DVI-I adaptors available, but, if you need one, look carefully to see exactly what you’re buying.
As for the memory: you need an SD card and a USB memory stick. They serve in two entirely different ways. The SD card only holds a boot script (which is tiny) and the RISC OS ROM image (which is only a few megabytes). MMC cards may also work. SDHC cards probably work too, though the extra capacity will be wasted. The USB memory stick, on the other hand, is the RISC OS “disc”, which usually contains a minimum of several hundred megabytes and growing with all your files. You won’t get away with less than 512 megabytes. The bigger the better; you can’t have too much hard drive capacity. It’s a generic USB flash drive we’re talking about here, not Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick (MS) devices.
OK, you’ve got all the items on your shopping list; now what do you do?
You’ll need the use of another computer for some of the following steps. You should at all times be careful not to damage the BeagleBoard by static electricity on your body. Keep yourself earther frequently, by touching some earthed metal such as a central heating radiator or a metal-cased computer. When you approach the BeagleBoard, you should do so from the edge, and touch one of the metal connector shells first.
Delete all files from the SD card. Then copy two files to it:
(The above information is extracted from another wiki page on this site; it’s the “easy way” on Using the Cortex-A8 port. )
Format the USB memory stick as ADFS using !SCSIForm, which you should have on your existing RISC OS computer. Do make sure to format the USB stkck, not your main hard drive! Check, double check, and check again before doing it.
From this page you’ll need two files: UnTarBZ2 and HardDisk4. HardDisk4 is a compressed image of the minimal contents of a RISC OS 5 disc image; you’ll need UnTarBZ2 to decompress it. Note that UnTarBZ2 is supplied in self-extracting form. Once you’ve installed UnTarBZ2 on your exising RISC OS computer, you can uncompress HardDisc4, and copy it to the USB memory stick. Don’t forget to dismount it before you unplug it.
OK, now connect everything up, and you should be ready to go! The SD card plugs straight in to the BeagleBoard; the monitor comes from the HDMI connector; the USB hub plugs into the BeagleBoard’s larger USB socket; the keyboard, mouse, USB stick and USB Ethernet adaptor (if you have it) plug into the USB hub. The BeagleBoard and the USB hub need their power supplies plugged in.
Turn it all on!
After what seems an eternity, RISC OS’s startup text should appear on the monitor, and leave you at a “*” prompt. Type “desktop” and you should see RISC OS’s familiar desktop.
You may be surprised to see that your “hard disc” has appeared as HardDisc0 or :0 rather than HardDisc4. No, it hasn’t malfunctioned; HardDisc0 is correct. The full path is SCSI::HardDisc0