EBC Getting Exercise Support Materials

You need to download some reference manuals and set up your Beagle with some extra files. Here's what to do.

Download Reference Manuals
There are two important hardware reference manuals you need to have, the System Reference Manual (SRM) and the Technical Reference Manual (TRM) for the ARM processor. Here's where to find them.
 * 1) Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack has the official reference materials for the Bone. Take a look through it to see what all is there.  Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack takes you to the hardware section. Here you will find a link to a pdf file with the SRM.  Download it.
 * 2) Finding the TRM is a bit trickier. Open the SRM you found in the previous step and find what processor it is using.  (Hint: page 54) You'll find a link to a TI site that has the manual.  Be sure you have the right one, it's some 22M and nearly 5,000 pages long!

Keep both of these in an easy to find place, we'll reference them now and then.

Set Up Git
Many of the following exercises require some extra files on the BeagleBoard. These files are stored in a git repository. We'll learn more about using git later. Here I'll just show you how to get the files.

Go to github and follow the directions for installing and setting up git using the Connecting over HTTPS method. Run the following command so you won't have to keep entering your username and password.

bone$ git config credential.helper 'cache --timeout=300'

Set up your own repository. If you are in the USA, go to github's edu request page and ask for a free upgrade.

Now you are ready to use github.

Get the Files
It only takes one command to pull down all the files.

bone$ git clone https://github.com/MarkAYoder/BeagleBoard-exercises.git exercises bone$ git checkout -b myBranch

This will take a while since it's getting all the course files, including pdf files of the course PowerPoint. You only have to clone once for each computer. Do the same on your host computer.

host$ git clone https://github.com/MarkAYoder/BeagleBoard-exercises.git exercises host$ git checkout -b myBranch

The git checkout lets you make changes to your local file and still be able to access new files that I'll add later. It will be discussed in detail later.

Now take a look at what you got.

bone$ cd exercises bone$ ls bone$ cd pptx bone$ ls

Later exercises will tell you which files to use from here.

If it's been a while since you did the clone it's a good idea to do a pull. This will make sure all the files are up to date.

beagle$ git pull

P8 and P9 Header Files
The BeagleBone Black has two headers, P8 and P9, that have lots of IO. There are two pdf files that have lots of information about the headers in this git repository. Here's how to get them host$ git clone https://github.com/derekmolloy/boneDeviceTree.git host$ cd boneDeviceTree/docs host$ ls BeagleboneBlackP8HeaderTable.pdf BeagleboneBlackP9HeaderTable.pdf Put these where you can find them again.