Set up the hardware

Before you can work with the board, here are a few things you must do. You'll need to connect the board and set the DIP switches. For more information, see the hardware guide for the i.MX8QM MEK on the NXP website.

Connect the hardware

In addition to the board, you require these cables:
  • a USB 2.0 A-Male to Micro-B cable
  • an Ethernet cable
CAUTION:

Use only the 12V DC power supply provided with the board. Use of any other power supply may permanently damage the board.

To connect the i.MX8QM MEK:

  1. Insert the SD card with your QNX IPL and QNX-IFS image file into the selected boot slot on the board (J19).
  2. Connect a USB cable from the board's DEBUG UART (J18) to the USB port on your host machine.
  3. Connect the Ethernet cable to the Ethernet jack on the board (J14).
  4. If you want to run graphics on your board, connect your monitor with a LVDS IMX-LVDS-HDMI adapter to the J7 port on the board.
  5. Connect the board's 12V DC power supply to the J16 connect on the board.
  6. Press the Reset switch (SW3) on the board to turn on the power on the board.
  7. Identify the host serial port on your host system:
    On a Linux you can check which port is the host serial port by looking at what port appears when the cable is inserted. To do this, type the command: 
    $ ls /dev/ttyUSB*

    On a Windows system, open the Device Manager and expand the Ports (COM and LPT) section. Then, look for a COM port named Gadget Serial or USB Serial Port.

  8. Connect to the COM port using your favorite terminal program with these settings:
    • Baud rate: 115200
    • Data: 8 bit
    • Parity: none
    • Stop: 1 bit
    • Flow control: none

    For more information about the VCP driver and terminal programs, see the Required software section of the Before You Begin chapter in this guide.

Set DIP switches on the i.MX8QM MEK

If this is the first time you're booting the board, you need to set the boot mode switch to boot using an SD card. On the i.MX8QM MEK, the boot mode switch is SW2. After you successfully boot the board with QNX OS , you can prepare it to boot using eMMC or xSPI NOR Flash memory.

Note:
On the boot mode switch, the boot mode number labels are located above the DIP switches. In the following table, ON (or 1) means that the switch is set to the top position, while OFF (or 0) means the switch is set to the bottom position, respectively.
Here are the DIP switch settings for the i.MX8QM MEK:
Boot mode Pin 1 Pin 2 Pin 3 Pin 4 Pin 5 Pin 6
Fuse 0 0 0 0 0 0
Serial Boot 0 0 1 0 0 0
eMMC0 0 0 0 1 0 0
SD card 0 0 1 1 0 0
Octal xSPI NOR Flash 0 0 0 1 1 0
SATA 0 0 0 0 0 1
To boot your board for the first time, you must set the switches to boot from a SD card as shown in the following illustration:
Figure 1SW2 DIP switch to boot using the SD card on the i.MX8QM MEK
After you boot the board with a SD card, you can use additional steps to boot from eMMC or xSPI NOR Flash. For more information, see Boot from an eMMC memory device and Boot using xSPI NOR flash, respectively.
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