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livramax · 10-25-2012, 03:44 PM

From what I've read and experienced the NT OMAP3 SD boot process is very finicky about the SDcard boot-partition's setup. Fortunately MiniTool Partition Wizard generally does very good job in creating a FAT32 boot-partition with the expected cylinder/sector geometry and alignment, especially from scratch (i.e., on a SD card with no existing partition on it). So if an SD card repeatedly fails to boot it's best to delete all the partitions and start fresh.

Also, I have found it helps to first copy the MLO and u-boot files then the rest of the files, since MLO and u-boot are to be loaded first, and it appears that OMAP only scans the first few entries of the partition-table to look for these two files.

Finally it's worth noting that generally the lower rating (and also cheaper) class 4 SD cards are more suitable for running a ROM than the higher classes 6 and 10 cards (since the latter are optimized for large & sequential block read/write at the expense of random read/write). So if you happen to use a class 10 or 6 card and your apps frequently crash or freeze, consider switching to a lower class SD card.

10-25-2012, 03:44 PM	#9
livramax Addict Posts: 275 Karma: 1115510 Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: USA Device: Nook ST, Aura HD, Galaxy Note 8, Fire HD10, Galaxy S6 Lite	From what I've read and experienced the NT OMAP3 SD boot process is very finicky about the SDcard boot-partition's setup. Fortunately MiniTool Partition Wizard generally does very good job in creating a FAT32 boot-partition with the expected cylinder/sector geometry and alignment, especially from scratch (i.e., on a SD card with no existing partition on it). So if an SD card repeatedly fails to boot it's best to delete all the partitions and start fresh. Also, I have found it helps to first copy the MLO and u-boot files then the rest of the files, since MLO and u-boot are to be loaded first, and it appears that OMAP only scans the first few entries of the partition-table to look for these two files. Finally it's worth noting that generally the lower rating (and also cheaper) class 4 SD cards are more suitable for running a ROM than the higher classes 6 and 10 cards (since the latter are optimized for large & sequential block read/write at the expense of random read/write). So if you happen to use a class 10 or 6 card and your apps frequently crash or freeze, consider switching to a lower class SD card. Last edited by livramax; 10-25-2012 at 05:24 PM.