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Do not apply power to the board
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Attach the board via serial to your system, ensuring power is still not applied
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Ensure the serial shows up in
/dev/ttyUSB*, you can see this by runningdmesgafter plugging in the device❯ dmesg [200199.253566] usb 1-2: new full-speed USB device number 79 using xhci_hcd [200199.386983] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001, bcdDevice= 6.00 [200199.386988] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [200199.386990] usb 1-2: Product: FT232R USB UART [200199.386991] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: FTDI [200199.386992] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: A50285BI [200199.390344] ftdi_sio 1-2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected [200199.390363] usb 1-2: Detected FT232RL [200199.391207] usb 1-2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0 ^^^^^^^ ^ This becomes /dev/ttyUSB0 -
nix run github:matthewcroughan/visionfive-nix#flashBootloader /dev/ttyUSB0 -
Wait to be told to apply power to the board this may take a while as U-Boot and OpenSBI are being cross-compiled.
Terminal ready ### Apply power to the VisionFive Board ###Once power is applied, picocom will send the OpenSBI/U-Boot payload via XMODEM. You can then flash NixOS or any other distribution that follows the Distro Boot specification1 to an SD card and boot it.
The VisionFive ships with a version of OpenSBI/U-Boot that does not follow the distro-boot specification. NixOS and other distros would like to remain generic, without vendor specific details entering their system. This means booting NixOS requires flashing the bootloader as described above.