Please help me save a Pico Core MX8MM development kit

  • Hello, I have been given an older a Pico Core MX8MM development kit consisting of "Pico Core BBDSI rev. 1.0" fitted with a board "PicoCore MX8MM Rev 1.10". Is an older kit from 2019 and has been discarded as not suitable by a company who evaluated it.

    For me as a hobbyist I believe is still a good learning tool, but unfortunately the company thoroughly scrubbed the kit, removing any stickers on the outside, and formatting the eMMC flash (the device appears as an empty IMX8MM when using the NXP uuu tool).

    I have attempted to get a schematic of the module, but only found one of the carrier board, and a not very detailed one (it does have VERY detailed mechanical drawings tough), but nothing on the SBC module itself, it seem to be like a very nice module, with LPDDR4 RAM, eMMC, a WiFI Bluetooth module from Marvell, a ROHM PMIC, and some audio chip.


    From what I was able to determine the module variant is "PicoCore MX8MM-V3-LIN".


    The problem is the documentation that I was able to find publicly is for revision 1.30 that is most likely different from revision 1.10 that I have and is really sparse of useful information for someone who wants to actually low-level program the board. It does have very detailed mechanical coordinates of the holes and sizes.


    In an attempt to retrieve some documentation, because I don't have means to get another IMX8MM board (they are not only very expensive, but lately also hard to find), I've registered this account but it seems that the possibility to download the documentation is tied to some serial number from the removed stickers ;(.

    There seem to be some GINORMOUS virtual machines (6GB+ files) that are available for download, unfortunately it seems that some IT genius set the RPI that serves the files to time-out and close the connection after one exactly hour and it would have not been a genius enough if didn't disable resume download as well, so with the Internet here peaking at around 1.1MB/s, I'm only able to get half of these files.


    I actually don't need a "proper" schematic, I don't care where your decoupling capacitors are, what I really need could be just a block diagram showing which peripheral is connected to which buss and what addresses are set for the ones that have configurable addresses, like I2C as well as the DDR4 timing and training files, that are specific for the board. A properly done device tree and the DDR timing files should be enough for me to do an U-Boot and Linux board configuration.


    My hobby is low-level system programming, I pride myself that I could do a full U-Boot board booting from just the schematic in less than 8 hours and the Linux in less than a week-end. As least I did for many IMX6 and 7 flavored boards, not yet for an IMX8 one so this is why I consider this a good opportunity for me to learn this MCU as well, also I can make a bit of cash on freelancer.com, I charge ca. 50USD for a "bootloader from schematic", which is kind of big money where I live, but the competition from China and India is stiff for IMX6 and 7, but less for IMX8.


    So if you can post the schematic or device tree and the RAM training files in the forum, or in a public place where one does not need an NDA and more intrusive registration it will be very nice.


    Also please excuse this long post that is probably ridden with spelling and grammar mistakes as English is not my native language. But do help if you can, if I can recreate the U-boot and Linux configurations for this board and have it working properly, I'm confident that I can bid on some freelancer projects and make 100, maybe 200USD because I hate working in the fields in this terrible hot weather.


    Best regards,

    Makumba

  • Hi Makumba,

    I read your post and your English is excelent..

    You can download all pdf's from the product webpage, including linux First Steps document. There on page 10 it mentions if U-boot is missing or corrupt.

    Check this post:

    flash from zero PicoCore imx8mn ddr3

    you can download Recovery.zip for MfgTool2 to put U-boot on the board. Hopefully it is ok for your revision board.

    Good luck

  • Hello and thanks for the answer, I thought the post will stay buried. But as far as I can see this is for an iMX8MN module, not iMX8MM, and AFAIK they are not compatible. Also it seem to be some binary-only image recovery and no source code or schematic, so is of no use for me, because I want to train in writing U-Boot for iMX8MM boards. Also even if it will work, there is no BSP (Toolchain + SDK). I could do this, but I need a schematic, or, at minimum, the device tree for my configuration and the DDR training files for the DDR4 memory on my board (your files are for DDR3).


    Best regards,

    Makumba

  • All our boards based on i.MX8 need a board configuration that tells the board what variant it actually is, i.e. whether it boots from NAND or eMMC, what size and type of RAM it has, whether WLAN is equipped or not, and so on. This board configuration is stored in flash (eMMC or NAND) and is supposed to always stay on the board and the boot process depends on it. Without this, the board does not know its own identity and hardware settings.


    If this configuration is lost somehow, it can be restored, but only if we know exactly what kind of board it is. In such a case, the customer will typically give us the serial number, which is also the MAC address of the board, either by looking at ethaddr in U-Boot, or by looking at the barcode sticker on the module. Then we can determine the right variant. Or he will look at his order, where he has given the specific variant he wants. However as you tell us, all software and all stickers are removed and there is also no other means of identification. So we do not see any option of how we can determine the correct variant of the module. For example if you see eMMC memory, it is not a V3. The V3 would have only NAND and no eMMC.


    In addition, the board revision 1.10 is not supported anymore, also the baseboard revision 1.00. They were only temporarily supported in a pre-release software that was available back in 2019. Both, this hardware and this software were only sent to very early adopters of the i.MX8MM platform and they typically received newer variants of both in the meantime.


    We also never release schematics of our modules, only from our carrier boards. So here I cannot help you anyway.

    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.

  • OK, thank you for a clear definitive, even if disappointing. answer, the company that discarded the board was then correct to throw it away, I will discard it as well as useless :(.

    Is a pithy, but it is as it is, I'll make sure that I never use or recommend these boards.

  • The customer who received the board in the first place got a fully functioning board with functioning software. With the serial number, he also had access to all the necessary source code, even newer versions. By deleting the software and removing all identification features, he wilfully destroyed the board. I find it somewhat unfair that you now draw the conclusion that we, the company F&S, have done something wrong so that you no longer want to recommend us. If someone wilfully deletes the BIOS on a PC and then passes the PC on, it can also no longer be used without further ado. Would this also be the fault of the manufacturer in your eyes?


    In addition we have replaced these modules with a newer board revision because there were hardware issues with these 1.00 revisions that are fixed in the new revision. This is a rather common way of doing things. And that a company does not support old revisions, that should not be in the field anyway, is also a completely normal process. So why do you blame us for this non-functioning board? This board is not supposed to exist anymore. A deliberately destroyed board of an unsupported old revision that was not directly bought from the manufacturer cannot be taken as a measure of the quality of this company.


    I understand that this is disappointing for your, but what do you expect from us?


    F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH
    As this is an international forum, please try to post in English.
    Da dies ein internationales Forum ist, bitten wir darum, Beiträge möglichst in Englisch zu verfassen.