BootROM vs. SD image mess

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
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I’ve been using Jetson Nano DevKits for quite some time now, but as of 2022, the BootROM situation is driving me mad…
-I’ve got Jetson Nano A and B dev boards.
-SD-Cards working well on older A machines don’t work in B machines. The system is booting up well, but no display device is detected ever.
-SD-Card Images up to 4.4 work well with both A and B machines. But updating the initrd (eg. by updateinitramfs) renders USB unusable - seems the devs forgot to configure the xusb firmware into it.
-SD-Card images 4.6 work well on all devices, but after updateinitramfs, they wont boot anymore at all.
-After booting an SD-Card image of 4.6, the BootROM is updated. The logo changed on older machines (black background is now white), and SD-Card images of 4.4 with updated initramfs do not boot anymore at all.

My questions:
-Is there any table (i’ve searched quite some time over the dev docs) that states which SD-Image will work with which Hardware Revision, and which BootROM revision?
-Is there any documentation in which cases the BootROM gets updated? Having “contagious” SD-Cards around that will render devices unable to run older cards is a very toxic state.
-Is there any documentation how to build an working initramfs, and why linux tools are seemingly not supported or able to do this? In fact it seems initrd’s made by updateinitramfs differ entirely from the ones shipped on the SD-Images - why is that?

Thank you very much, any advice is appreciated…

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I am not sure if what I think is the same thing as what you are talking about.

  1. After jetpack4.5, the partition layout has been changed. If you ever used sdkmanager and the BSP, check the xml files under Linux_for_Tegra/bootloader/t210/configs. It will tell you which files are the QSPI-NOR flash on the module. Actually, only APP partitions are on the sdcard now.

  2. When a sdcard image that is >= jetpack4.5 is plugged into a module with old bootloader, this sdcard will upgrade the bootloader on the module. And it will delete those unnecessary partitions on the sd and your sdcard will only have APP partition as (1) afterwards. Under such situation, if you move this sdcard to another board that is not >= jp4.5, it may not boot.

  3. Actually, we don’t support to use initramfs. So it is possible that using that would go wrong.

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