Micro SD

[scott104]

Hi all

I’m not sure if I’m going mad, but I cannot see reference to the micro SD slot in the reference design for the dev kit.

Have I missed it?

There was no mention of the microSD in previous literature, and yet the dev kit seems to have a microSD as boot?

I am not going to have any storage on my custom carrier other than the NVME, do you see any issues we could hit by only having NVME?

My understanding was that we can use NVME for booting and don’t need micro SD ?

[andres.artavia]

Hi @scott104 ,
Yes as far as I know the Orin Nano doesn’t has SD card slot, but has the NVMe.
I think you can desing a custom carrier to have an SD card slot but the SoM itself doesn’t has it.

Regards,
Andres
Embedded SW Engineer at RidgeRun
Contact us: support@ridgerun.com
Developers wiki: https://developer.ridgerun.c om/
Website: www.ridgerun.com

[scott104]

I think that it does support it, else how could the dev kit have a microSD slot?

When you download the Orin Nano Dev Kit reference design files titled:

Jetson_Orin_Nano_DevKit_Carrier_Board_Reference_Design_Files_A04_20230320

The schematic is the P3678_A04 schematic which is the Orin NXC schematic not the Orin Nano… IS this a mistake?

I suppose my question to NVidia is, should i include a microSD slot? Or is nVME ONLY ok?

Is there any guidance to flashing onto the nVME instead of the microSD which all the dev kit docs speak about?

[Trumany]

Hi, SD slot design is not supported, nVME only is ok. Orin NX and Orin nano share same carrier design, P3768_A04.

[scott104]

I see…

But this guide…

Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit User Guide - Software Setup | NVIDIA Developer

States:

“You can start using Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit right away by simply inserting a flashed microSD card and power it on with the bundled power supply.
NVIDIA provides a SD card image that has OS and all the NVIDIA SDK software, so you can flash your microSD card using your computer (Windows, Mac, Linux).”

I guess this is only on the dev kit then?

What is the method for flashing production devices? Do we flash the SSD directly? What’s the process?

[Trumany]

I mean SD slot is not supported on custom carrier board design as external storage, nVME is the only supported external storage. The SD slot on module is available for flashing.

[scott104]

Ah thank you, its clear now.

Is there any downside to only having nVME SSD?

I would like to omit SD Card and not use USB C Recovery…

Does this pose me any issues? If i dont design in the usb recovery port, what are my limitations? Can i flash the image directly onto the SSD?

[WayneWWW]

@scott104

If i dont design in the usb recovery port

Are you talking about a custom board here?

[scott104]

yes :)

[WayneWWW]

Basically this is same as what I mentioned in this post.

Initrd nvme

Initrd flash requires USB device mode on usb0 is on when boot into kernel. Some custom boards do not have usb0 as device mode so it will fail. It also needs your kernel be able to detect the nvme drive. For example, if you didn’t use the default pcie for nvme as devkit and changes it to something else, then default jetpack won’t be able to find this nvme so flash will fail too. That section is talking about how to escape from such case.

You still need to design usb0 to be able to enter recovery mode in hardware.

[scott104]

Got it, its now clear.

I saw usb recovery mode and it made me think… what if i dont have it ? Good job i checked thanks a lot!

[scott104]

@Trumany

P3768_A04

I will use the reference from Jetson_Orin_NX_Series_and_Orin_Nano_Series_Design_Guide_DG-10931-001_v0.99

This has a simple implementation of the USB recovery.