First of all, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on your country. I saw on some forums that it’s better to ask here to clear up any doubts. The main issue is that I’m a novice; I don’t know anything about the device, so I’m like a baby at this. I’m just starting the installation, but I can’t even manage it. I used AI to guide me, and the worst part is that it told me to install 5.1.2, which is wrong with the device I’m using. I followed the instructions on the website, but after I tried to install the 5.1.3 file, the Jetson starts normally, but then the screen goes black. I asked the AI about this, and it said it must be the SD card I’m using, a Kingston Canvas Go Plus. I bought it because it was inexpensive and meets the requirements for operation. The problem is that when I put it in the Jetson, it malfunctions. The AI says it’s because the Jetson has a lot of problems with that micro SD card, which is why it doesn’t recognize it. I don’t know much about this, so I couldn’t confirm it. I bought the device this year around mid-August. I only opened it once and then put it back in its box to keep it dust-free. Now that I need it, it won’t work, and I’m frustrated. Sorry if my writing is strange; I’m using a translator, and my only language is Spanish. I wasn’t sure whether to write in my native language or the most common language here. I hope you can help me. If possible, please keep the answers simple because I don’t understand these kinds of devices very well.
Are you using just an NVIDIA developer’s kit, or does this use a third party carrier board? One way to tell is by where the SD card slot is mounted. You’ll notice that there is a module mounted onto a carrier board, and for a developer’s kit that SD card slot is actually mounted to the bottom of the module and not to the carrier board. Also, those models don’t have eMMC memory.
Jetsons do not have a traditional hardware BIOS. What they have is the equivalent running as software, and that software is part of flashing. The content I’m speaking of is in QSPI memory on the module itself, and thus the SD card is not the entire story as to whether or not it will boot. The Jetson itself must be flashed once with the same major release of software as to what the SD card is using, and after that you can freely switch between SD cards of that release.
For clarity, L4T (“Linux for Tegra”) is just what we call Ubuntu after drivers have been added to it for a Jetson. The major release I’m speaking of is the L4T release. This is what actually gets flashed. JetPack/SDK Manager is a GUI front end helper to flashing, and normally a JetPack/SDKM release is tied to a given L4T release, and so it is safe to say that a JetPack 5.x release is also claiming to be a particular L4T release, but JetPack does have the option to start it such that it lists earlier releases. Here is the URL to L4T releases and which hardware it is compatible with:
https://developer.nvidia.com/linux-tegra
This happens to be an L4T R35.x which is compatible with Orin when you speak of JetPack 5.x.
The flash software for the most recent L4T an Orin Nano developer’s kit can run on is currently L4T R36.4.4. The Orin Nano can run on the R35.x, but R36.x is probably better. If you start with a prebuilt image for R36.x, then maybe it will boot correctly (this would require that any content on QSPI to already be R36.x also). Remember that if you cross R35.x and R36.x it won’t boot.
Also, sometimes video monitor cable adapters are a problem. Jetsons require a wire which exists in HDMI and DisplayPort (also in Digital DVI, but not Analog DVI; older VGA “advanced” hardware has an incompatible wire claiming to be compatible). An adapter between something like VGA and HDMI will fail (or an adapter between VGA and DisplayPort will fail). The GPU of a Jetson is integrated directly to the memory controller (an iGPU), while most people are used to a GPU which is on the PCI bus as a discrete GPU (a dGPU). The drivers are different, and the iGPU version for a Jetson is more limited in mode setting. That mode setting only works if the named wire above is present. The wire is a DDC wire, and the data is the EDID data which allows the monitor to self-describe to the GPU.
One of the best inexpensive tools you can use is the serial console. The original Nano and other earlier Nanos may use a different cable, and so make sure any tutorials are for the Orin Nano. If you see Orin Nano “Super” content, then the hardware is the same (it just uses different software, a tutorial should work). I don’t have the Orin Nano here, but this is NVIDIA’s own documentation on pinout:
https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/learn/jetson-orin-nano-devkit-user-guide/hardware_spec.html
Look for the serial console information as this is very valuable when developing. This is basically a text mode interface which provides debug output and actual access in most cases. This interface tends to show output to an outside host PC without the need for video drivers or most any other driver. Serial consoles display on the other computer, which eliminates any display failures from stopping that interface. Serial console does need to exist in the stage where the failure is occurring to see anything, but mostly there should be useful output when the monitor does not show anything.
Also, the host PC is used for flashing the Jetson itself (not the SD card). This gets a bit complicated because the host PC has to be using a narrow range of Ubuntu installs for the flash software to work. JetPack/SDK Manager is listed to work with a fairly wide range of host Ubuntu releases, but this is further reduced depending on the release being flashed. The documents at the L4T release URL will provide information for the specific L4T release requirements. Sometimes people try to use a VM for the host PC, and this can work, but it isn’t recommended (often there are difficulties setting up VM pass through of USB, and each VM has different instructions for this).
Finally, there are more general documents here, but they are related to other topics than the specific L4T release:
https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads
FYI, it is unlikely the Kingston SD card is an issue unless it is too small. More likely the Jetson itself needs to be flashed once (and then you won’t have to worry about flashing the Jetson itself again so long as you stick with that major release).
Thanks for the reply. You’re absolutely right about everything you said. Jetson gave me so many problems that I had to resort to the SDK Manager to get it working. I even had to install Ubuntu on a partition of my PC, only installing what was necessary for it to boot. Now I’ve finally been able to test it. I also tested it on another screen and the HDMI input worked. I figured the cable or the DisplayPort adapter might be faulty, but it’s too specific for those inputs. At least now I can continue where I found it online.