🛠 Premier boot de la BeagleBone Black avec un seul câble mini-USB

Objectives

Boot a BeagleBone Black (TI Sitara AM3358, Cortex-A8 1 GHz, 512 MB DDR3, 4 GB eMMC from revision C onwards) without any additional peripherals: the board enumerates a USB drive (open start.htm) and an RNDIS network interface, and Linux starts in about ten seconds. You will also learn the board's #1 pitfall: the BOOT button must be held DURING the power cycle, and RESET never re-selects the boot device.

Hardware

• 1 BeagleBone Black (or Black Wireless / Green, same P8/P9 pinout)
• 1 mini-USB DATA cable (many spare cables are charge-only)
• 1 Ethernet cable to your network
• For later steps: 5.5/2.1 mm center-positive barrel jack ≥ 1 A, and a microSD card if you want to boot from card

Full code

# 1. Brancher Ethernet, puis le mini-USB vers le PC.
#    La carte apparaît comme lecteur USB (cliquer start.htm) + adaptateur
#    réseau RNDIS. Sous Linux, l'interface apparaît toute seule :
ip -br a

# 2. SSH vers la carte (image officielle BeagleBoard)
ssh debian@beaglebone          # mot de passe initial : temppass123

# 3. Sur la carte, vérifier l'identité et le noyau
cat /proc/device-tree/model    # "TI AM335x BeagleBone Black"
uname -a ; free -h             # 512 MB de RAM, ça se respecte

# 4. Boot sur microSD : maintenir BOOT ENFONCÉ pendant qu'on rebranche le
#    courant (RESET seul ne change rien au périphérique de boot).
sudo /opt/scripts/tools/version.sh   # versions image+noyau (images communautaires)

Expected verification

The PC detects a removable drive and a virtual network interface; SSH succeeds; model returns "TI AM335x BeagleBone Black" and uname -m shows armv7l. The heartbeat LED starts pulsing once the system is up.

Common errors

• Mini-USB cable "charge-only": nothing appears at all; try another cable.
• Pressing RESET to boot from microSD: the ROM samples SYSBOOT pins only at power-on — you must hold BOOT during the power cycle.
• Corrupted eMMC image but with valid ROM headers: the ROM stays stuck on eMMC; the BOOT button is the only way out.
• Powering solely via PC USB (500 mA max) while the kernel boot peak already reaches 460 mA: for capes and USB host, use the 5 V barrel jack.
• Wrong SSH address on wired network: try debian@beaglebone.local or scan the network.