Re: My first try installing

On Fri, 2024-06-07 at 12:23 -0700, [email protected]
wrote:
> I have the Jetson Nano develpment kit from Nvidia, and I'm trying to
> install NetBSD on it. I followed the instructions here:
> 
> http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/tegra/
> 
> because I know this system has a Tegra module with a Cortex-A57 CPU.
> I never heard the T1/X1 terminology before, so I'm not completely
> sure
> this system is expected to work at all ... but looks close.

Close often isn't good enough. SoCs don't have self describing hardware
like PCs do and so you need a devicetree file that describes your
hardware. Grabbing an "old" or "close" devicetree file has never worked
for me.

> 
> I flashed the NetBSD/arm64 live image on a 16G SD card; then I
> downloaded and unpacked http://pkgsrc.se/sysutils/u-boot-jetson-tx1 ,
> extracted the .bin file from it, and flashed that over the first part
> of the SD (starting at 8k) as instructed here:
> 
> https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0/evbarm-aarch64/INSTALL.html
> 
> Then I tried to boot with a display connected to the HDMI port.
> Sadly,
> I just get the Nvidia logo (probably from firmware) and nothing after
> that.  Any help or direction is appreciated, but if I have to
> formulate specific questions:
> 
> - is the Jetson Nano DK system known to work at all?

I think that the people who have had access to a Jetson Nano in the
past (such as myself) haven't known enough about how to get ARM SoC
systems running to get this to work. 

I now know more than I did and I still have my Jetson Nano. I have just
finished messing about with another ARM board, so I have some time to
help out with this. I would certainly like to get NetBSD running on my
Jetson Nano.

> 
> - is a console over HDMI supported, or do I have to use
>   serial-over-USB console?

I'm expect that U-Boot will only support serial over USB and you are
going to need to use U-Boot's console, at least at first.

> 
> - am I doing something else quite wrong?
> 

Probably. The Jetson Nano boot process is a little more complicated
than some other ARM SoCs that I have used.

Ngā-mihi,
Lloyd