Loosing monitor signal on startup problem getting worse

Hi.

I don’t know if this place or the bug tracker is preferrable for this, but I figured that postings may have a higher chance of being read here:

I just upgraded to the latest OMAP RISC OS (2011-10-12), the version I had being quite old, and the old problem of the BeagleBoard loosing monitor signal appear to have got worse…

Before I upgraded, it used to happen maybe 50% of the time, or more. Sometimes, I had to reset the board 3-4 times before I got to the supervisor prompt; the other times I got “monitor signal lost” on the screen.

After I upgraded, I’m now hardly able to boot: I’ve had to try more than 10 times to boot before, finally, I get to the supervisor prompt…

I remember reading a long time ago that Jeffrey wrote somewere this was a known problem, and I guess there hasn’t been any progress on tracking it down and fixing it…?

One thing I appreciate, though – once it finally boots – is the ability to save the CMOS RAM, so that I may now make it boot automatically, thanks. :)

Regards,

Terje

I remember reading a long time ago that Jeffrey wrote somewere this was a known problem, and I guess there hasn’t been any progress on tracking it down and fixing it…?

Part of the problem is that this only seems to happen on original beagleboards – the beagleboard-xM is fine. So it wasn’t until you mentioned it now that I remembered I still hadn’t fixed it! :(

I’ll have a proper look at it this week and see what I can do about it. I’ve already got a good idea of what I need to do, but since I haven’t been using my original board much since getting my -xM I’ve never been in the position to try out the idea.

only seems to happen on original beagleboards

I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but occasionally a second (or third) reboot is needed on the Touch Book¹ too.

¹ Obviously based on the original board.

It’s something I have never seen on my BB. Why might it affect some boards much more than others?

Part of the problem is that this only seems to happen on original beagleboards – the beagleboard-xM is fine.

Ah, ok, then I know it’s specific to the original BeagleBoard… I intended to skip over the xM, and instead go for the PandaBoard if/when it became a sufficiently better alternative.

I’d appreciate it if you would take an extra look at it, yes, since for some reason with the latest RISC OS version now barely starts with my board.

If we can’t find a solution to it, maybe this would be a good time for me to try out the PandaBoard… :)

Trevor: It sounds like the same thing, yes.

It looks like I’ve found the problem. It was caused by me skipping out a vital part of the reset sequence (disabling the LCD output before resetting the controller), due to the fear that the code could cause an infinite loop. If I’d bothered to check then I would have seen that the code would have been safe, but I guess it’s just something I forgot to return to once I had the initial version working.

Expect a new ROM image to be up for download in the next day or two.

That’s great to hear, Jeffrey. :)

I’ve reverted back to the old ROM for now (which also had this problem, but not that severe), but it’ll be nice to be able to use the latest version again… :)