i.mx93 evk boot from sd card

[rockerr]

Hi, I'm trying to boot my custom image build with yocto and bsp layers provided by nxp, however the board always boots from the eMMC memory. It seems that in the i.MX 93 EVK Quick Start Guide boot switches setup for booting from an Micro SD card isn't even mentioned. What am I missing here?

What's the correct setup to boot from a micro SD card? Or perhaps is there a way to flash the wic.zst image directly to the eMMC?

[joanxie]

what flash command do you use? if you want to boot from sd card, you need to use dd command or uuu -b sd_all <bootloader> <wic image> to download images to the sd card, pls check it if you flash the images to the sd card correctly or not

[rockerr]

This is the command I use, I really think the card is being flashed properly.

zstdcat <image_name>.wic.zst | sudo dd of=/dev/sd<partition> bs=1M conv=fsync

[ramprakash08]

It sounds like you're having trouble booting your i.MX93 EVK from an SD card. The boot switch settings for booting from an SD card are indeed not mentioned in the i.MX 93 EVK Quick Start Guide. However, you can find these settings in the i.MX 93 EVK Hardware User Guide. Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Set the BOOT_MODE[1:0] switches to '10' to select the Serial Downloader mode.
2. Set the BOOT_CFG[3:0] switches to '0100' to select the SD card as the boot device.

As for flashing the wic.zst image directly to the eMMC, you can use the dd command in Linux. Here's a sample command:

 dd if=/path/to/your/image.wic.zst of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M 

Replace '/path/to/your/image.wic.zst' with the actual path to your image file. Also, make sure to replace '/dev/mmcblk0' with the correct device node for your eMMC.

Please note that this command will overwrite the entire eMMC, so make sure to backup any important data first.

Also, please be aware that the dd command does not provide any progress indication. It may appear to be doing nothing, but it is actually writing the image to the eMMC. Be patient and wait for the command to complete.

Hope this helps!

[rockerr]

Maybe you could elaborate on how to set the board into a mode that would allow the eMMC to be flashed as well? Somehow I cannot find a proper document with instructions on how to do that.

[rockerr]

Could you tell me the code number of the BOOT_MODE and BOOT_CFG switches?

I didn't find a file called "i.MX 93 EVK Hardware User Guide", the best I could do is "i.MX 93 EVK Hardware Design Guide" and it doesn't contain information on which switches are the BOOT_MODE and BOOT_CFG swtiches. I don't think there are any labels like this on the i.MX 93 EVK board.

I did find a label "BMODE" on the board, is that the BOOT_MODE set of switches? This is accompanied by a list of ["BM1", "BM0", "BM2", "BM3"].

[joanxie · Accepted solution]

SW1301 is boot mode, and you can find the table on the board too, for microSD/SDHC2, the SW1302[3:0]=0010

[hutchman]

So I did like 4 complete clean builds from different distros, NXP and meta-freescale releases ... and couldn't get the imx93evk to boot from sdcard.  But my issue turned out to be the dip switch settings.

I looked at the hardware guide (see pic of it below) and the quick start guide and all say SD is 0010 (specifically sw1301-3 is on) but the attached picture is what actually worked for me after wasting tons of time:

So actually that's sw1301-2 that's on and all others off!

Regards,

Brian

[joanxie]

in fact, you can find the boot table on the imx93evk board, it shows

sw1301[3:0]=0010 for SD card

[hutchman]

It sure does:

And since it says SW1301[3:0] most people would look at that and set

Switch - Position

1 - off

2 - off

3 - on

4 - off

I'll wait (and won't hold my breath) while you go try that and see what happens.  Spoiler alert ... nothing, it doesn't work.

Now if you noticed my picture above of what actually works, it sets:

Switch - Position

1 - off

2 - on

3 - off

4 - off

... which does not match the silk screen, quick start guide, hardware guide etc..

But, it does match what ramprakash08 said above so they should probably get credit for the right answer ha, ha.

Regards,

Brian

[joanxie]

yes, the table isn't clear enough for the engineer who use imx93 first time, but sw1301[3:0] =0010 means 4-off, 3-off,2-on, 1-off, sw1301[0:3]=0010 means 1-off 2-off,3-on,4-off, indeed most people would misunderstand this, maybe SW1301[4-1] is more clear, you also can refer to the table, it's very clear to understand how the switch mode works

[rockerr]

which one is SW1302? All the switches I see are SW1301, SW101, SW1005, SW1006, SW1007.

[joanxie]

sorry it's my typo, I mean SW1301

[rockerr]

Thanks, I finally got it!