1.1.3. Create SD Card

Note

You will need an SD Card and an SD Card Reader.

1.1.3.1. Create SD Card with Default Images

  1. Install the AM64x Processor SDK on a Linux or a Windows machine at <PSDK_PATH>

  1. The default bootable SD card image (WIC file) is available at <PSDK_PATH>/linux/filesystem/tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.wic.xz

  1. Decompress the tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.wic.xz to tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.wic

    • For Linux:
    cd <PSDK_PATH>/linux/filesystem
unxz tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.wic.xz
    • For Windows, decompress the WIC image with a file archiver like 7-zip or winzip.

  1. Flash the WIC image to SD card

    • For Linux:

      1. First, make sure that the SD card is unmounted. You can use lsblk to inspect whether the SD card partitions have a MOUNTPOINT. If the SD card is mounted, use umount to unmount the partitions.

        For example, if lsblk returned this:

        $ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
:
:
sdc      8:32   1    15G  0 disk
├─sdc1   8:33   1 131.8M  0 part /media/localUser/boot
└─sdc2   8:34   1 765.9M  0 part /media/localUser/root

        Then we would want to unmount sdc1 and sdc2:

        $ sudo umount /media/localUser/boot
$ sudo umount /media/localUser/root
$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
:
:
sdc      8:32   1    15G  0 disk
├─sdc1   8:33   1 131.8M  0 part
└─sdc2   8:34   1 765.9M  0 part

      2. Next, write the WIC image to the SD card with the following command:

        sudo dd bs=4M if=./tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.wic of=/dev/sdx status=progress && sync

        In the above example, the SD card is at /dev/sdc. In that case, the image write command would look like this:

        sudo dd bs=4M if=./tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.wic of=/dev/sdc status=progress && sync

    • For Windows, write the WIC image to the SD card with Win32DiskImager.exe (https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download)


1.1.3.2. Create SD Card with Custom Images

Note

The TI script used to generate custom SD card images should be run on a Linux computer.

For a Linux+baremetal application to boot from a SD card, two partitions need to be created on the SD card:

  • boot partition
  • rootfs partition

create-sdcard-image.sh is provided in the Processor SDK to simplify this card creation process. Here are the steps on how to use the script to create a custom WIC image to place on an SD card.

  1. Install the AM64x Processor SDK on a Linux machine at <PSDK_PATH> .

  1. Create a rootfs folder. create-sdcard-image.sh will use the rootfs folder to populate the rootfs partition on the WIC image.

    Let’s use the prebuilt rootfs as an example. It is located at <PSDK_PATH>/linux/filesystem/tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.tar.xz

    cd <PSDK\_PATH>/linux/filesystem
mkdir rootfs

    Un-tar the tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.tar.xz to <PSDK_PATH>/linux/filesystem/rootfs

    tar -xvf tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.tar.xz -C rootfs

  1. Create a boot folder. create-sdcard-image.sh will use the boot folder to populate the boot partition on the WIC image.

    Let’s use the prebuilt images as an example. They are located at <PSDK_PATH>/linux/board-support/prebuilt-images

    mkdir boot
cp ../board-support/prebuilt-images/tispl.bin boot
cp ../board-support/prebuilt-images/tiboot3.bin boot
cp ../board-support/prebuilt-images/u-boot-am64xx-evm.img boot/u-boot.img
cp ../board-support/prebuilt-images/uEnv.txt boot

  1. Use create-sdcard-image.sh to generate a custom WIC file.

    You can give the WIC image any name. In this example, we will name it custom-image.wic.

    ../bin/scripts/create-sdcard-image.sh boot rootfs custom-image.wic

  1. If you want make changes to the custom WIC image, simply make changes to the boot and/or rootfs folders. Then use step 4 to re-create the WIC image.

  1. See section Create SD Card with Default Images for steps to write your custom WIC image to an SD card.

1.1.3.3. Create SD Card for RTOS or Baremetal Only Applications

For an RTOS or baremetal only application to boot from a SD card, the boot partition is the only partition needed. However, you can still use an SD card with multiple partitions. For example, the prebuilt WIC file <PSDK_PATH>/linux/filesystem/tisdk-default-image-am64xx-evm.wic.xz has both a boot partition and a rootfs partition, but it can still be used for RTOS or baremetal only applications. Just make your modifications to the boot partition and ignore the rootfs partition.

  1. Create an SD card.

    For example, use steps in section Create SD Card with Default Images to create an SD card with the prebuilt WIC image.


  1. Build the RTOS or baremetal applications you want to run.

    We will use the benchmark_demo as an example. Refer to Benchmark Demo - User Guide for more details.

    make common_libs benchmark_demo BUILD_LINUX_APPS=0 RTOS_ONLY_BUILD=1   (for Linux)
gmake common_libs benchmark_demo BUILD_LINUX_APPS=0 RTOS_ONLY_BUILD=1  (for Windows)

  1. Place the bootable files you generated into the SD card boot partition.

    In our example, you can find the 3 baremetal SD card bootable files in <PSDK_PATH>/apps/benchmark_demo/out/AM64X/SDCardImage

    1. Delete all files from the SD card boot partition
    2. Copy the 3 baremetal SD card bootable files from <PSDK_PATH>/apps/benchmark_demo/out/AM64X/SDCardImage to the boot partition of the SD card

  1. The modified SD card is now ready to be used on AM64x EVM