Debian Linux Not Booting from SD

[bimodh]

Hi Guyz,

I did all the steps as per given here: http://olimex.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/building-bootable-sd-card-with-debian-linux-image-for-a13-olinuxino/

But still the OS is not booting.
I made 2 partitions, one of ext3 and the other of FAT. I have unzipped the rootfs to the ext3 and copied script.bin and uImage to the FAT partition. Still its not booting up.

I connected the UART1 Pins GND, TX and RX to RS232 and Opened the terminal. I am getting a screen with message like this:

åëw[}e‹¿¿•›¿e-{åë#!åëm›y‹¿¿¿=79•3¿¯c!¿›¿›Ÿ›¿¥¿—‹"‹Ÿ›­¿}''-##5W59/#!'!1

What is this? I am not understanding this. What to do next?
I had suspected my SD Card, so i have tried out with both 4GB and 8GB SD Card. But both shows the same. So what might be the issue? Please Help.....

[friendlyfinn]

At least you are getting some output on the serial. It probably means that at least U-Boot is starting up.

UART settings on PC are probably correctly set at 115200,8,n,1 right?

On another forum I saw someone with the same kind of output and his issue was with serial cable, so I would first check connections and/or try another cable. What kind of a cable are you using?

[bimodh]

Thanks for the reply...

Yes, UART Settings are correct only in the PC, i confirmed it once again.

Again, i tried with the another cable too, which results in the same output. I am using a usb to serial converter and from the serial output, i am taking out the pins as follows,

2-Rx
3-Tx and
5-Gnd.

I connect the
Rx of RS232(Pin 2) to Tx of UART1(Pin 3),
Tx of RS232(Pin 3) to Rx of UART1(Pin 2),
Gnd of RS232(Pin 5) to Gnd of UART1(Pin 1).

As discussed above, that is my configuration. Any idea on what might be the issue?

[dr.bing]

connect

RX to RX
and
TX to TX

[bimodh]

Hi dr.bing, thanks for the reply.

I tried out that also, but there is no change in the output.

And i am having some doubts, what does this steps do?

# dd if=spl/sunxi-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8
# dd if=u-boot.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=32

where does the u-boot.bin resides? Either in 1st partition or second partition?

And again, i suspect whether my u-boot.bin got corrupted. If that might be the case, can someone please send me a u-boot.bin file?

[friendlyfinn]

You are saying that however you connect the pins (RX->TX or RX->RX) you always get the same output?
If that's the case, then logically thinking I'd say that the output you see is not really the output coming from the A13 serial port, because it shouldn't be possible to receive the same data in both connections...

SPL and uboot are written at a location before the first partition.

If you receive something on the serial, to me it sound like your U-boot has already setup the UART and it's sending something.

Therefore at this point, I would still not suspect your u-boot, but some issue in the serial comm.
Is your cable type such, that supports 3.3V level signals?

[bimodh]

Guyz, Finally i got it. Everything working fine now.

Thanks a lot for your support

Actually, the problem was i was using an RS232 to USB Converter. RS232 works on the voltage level -13 to +13V. But What our output comes is between 0 to 5v(TTL OutPuts). So the RS232 could not work on this voltage. So when i introduced a MAX232 Converter in between, everything works fine.

If you want more details on this, please check this link: http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/215

Hope, it may helps some one.

Once again, thanks to all guys for the support.

Expecting the same in future also.