Thank you Graham. That clears a lot of stuff up for me. It just so happens 
that I am using 8 of the LCD data pins for my shield without knowing about 
how loading those pins down can result in a disturbance in the booting 
process. Since I was not using an LCD, I thought no harm would come from 
using those pins.

On Tuesday, March 24, 2015 at 8:05:22 AM UTC-7, Graham wrote:
>
> The Sitara uses a field of pull-up and pull-down resistors to tell it how 
> to boot.
> If you put any LOAD on these pins, and your I/O does NOT have to be 
> powered, (which would make 
> things even worse), you will give it the wrong boot commands, and the BBB 
> won't boot.
>
> Go read the section in the System Reference Manual on Boot Configuration, 
> and
> the section on Pin Usage Considerations.
>
>
> --- Graham
>
> ==
>
> On Tuesday, March 24, 2015 at 9:42:12 AM UTC-5, Khalil Estell wrote:
>>
>> Hello All,
>>
>> I have become stumped by this issue. I am trying to boot up a BBB when 
>> connected to the inputs of six MD10C motor controllers 
>> <http://www.robotshop.com/media/files/pdf/user-manual-md10c-v2.pdf>. For 
>> the most part, it works fine if the BBB has been boot up before 
>> *connecting* the direction and pwm pins to the beagle bone black. If I 
>> attempt to power the BBB with them connected, the power light indicator 
>> will come on, but the status lights will not. The configuration of the 
>> circuit is this: I have a custom shield that I made that breaks out the pwm 
>> pins and gpio pins I need for the controller. The controllers are powered 
>> by an 24V battery power supply rated at 15A output. The BBB is powered by 
>> 5V regulator rated at 6A.
>>
>> Here is what I have attempted thus far:
>>
>>
>>    1. Turn on battery, which is powers the 5V regulator and the motor 
>>    controllers, which turns everything on at the "same" time. BBB does not 
>>    boot up.
>>    2. Remove cape (with all the connections still on), turn on battery, 
>>    BBB boots, once the light indicators are no longer all a solid blue, I 
>>    replace the cape, and everything works, BBB continues to boot up.
>>    3. If I remove all but one input to one controller and power up the 
>>    battery, BBB sometimes boots.
>>    4. I have attempted to add 1k and 10k resistors between the 
>>    connections which allowed the BBB sometimes to boot with two motors 
>> inputs 
>>    connected.
>>    5. *Wierd one:* I decided to remove the power from two controller 
>>    (except for ground), and connect them to the BBB. Still it did not boot. 
>>    The motor controllers did not get powered at all!
>>    6. *Wierder one: I removed all of the power wires from from both 
>>    controllers and still the BBB will not boot up if connected to the motor 
>>    controller inputs.*
>>
>> Does anyone have idea what is happening here? One of my solutions was to 
>> use a relay to turn on the power to the motor controllers after the BBB has 
>> fully booted up or add a second switch that turns on the motor controllers 
>> after the BBB has fully booted, but that plan can not work if merely 
>> pluggin in the inputs causes this problem.
>>
>> I do know about this issue: DO NOT APPLY VOLTAGE TO ANY I/O PIN WHEN 
>> POWER IS NOT SUPPLIED TO THE BOARD. IT WILL DAMAGE THE PROCESSOR AND VOID 
>> THE WARRANTY. NO PINS ARE TO BE DRIVEN UNTIL AFTER THE SYS_RESET LINE GOES 
>> HIGH. But in this case, there is no power coming from the input pins.
>>
>> *Last note: I measured the resistance from the dir pin and the pwm pin to 
>> ground and they come up 16k and 20k respectively.  * 
>>
>> I appreciate any suggestions or help on this matter.
>>
>

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