Boot without SD Card?

abirtz · June 18, 2021, 1:09pm

Any way to boot without SD Card ?

I following the instruction of jawn-smith " [Installing Ubuntu 21.04 on the HiFive Unmatched]" on nvme and everything work fine but the SD card is needded to boot.

Can I use the Boot Mode Select DIP Switch to boot without sd card ?

davidlt · June 18, 2021, 2:31pm

This is currently not implemented in U-Boot SPL. SPI-NOR Flash is empty out of the factory and doesn’t contain any firmware.

abirtz · June 18, 2021, 7:21pm

not implemented in U-Boot SPL
doesn’t contain any firmware

can we hope implementation or firmware soon ?

xypron · August 26, 2021, 11:09am

Booting from Flash describes reading SPI in SPL. But can the Boot ROM load U-Boot SPL from SPI?

jimw · August 26, 2021, 3:15pm

The is all explained in the Booting from Flash thread. Not clear why you are asking here. The flash is just another disk with partitions like the sdcard, and the boot select switches on the motherboard determines which disk we read from at boot.