05-10-2018, 07:37 PM
And before you ask why... it's because with out it, you can't debug what the heck is going on with the board! 
With it you, may be able to glean from the bootup messages what is happening... and we might be better able to understand things like 'no boot at all' ("well, it actually does power up, but it doesn't boot" or "the module power light just flashed when I had more than three plugged in and didn't do anything at all" or "the module does boot, but the darn things all claim they have the same mac address, so my router has a hissy fit", etc, etc).
Basically, without some way of connecting to that serial console, it's hard to debug stuff on ARM based SBCs as there is no BIOS, so no stuff to screen until the system is well and truly loading.
With it you, may be able to glean from the bootup messages what is happening... and we might be better able to understand things like 'no boot at all' ("well, it actually does power up, but it doesn't boot" or "the module power light just flashed when I had more than three plugged in and didn't do anything at all" or "the module does boot, but the darn things all claim they have the same mac address, so my router has a hissy fit", etc, etc).
Basically, without some way of connecting to that serial console, it's hard to debug stuff on ARM based SBCs as there is no BIOS, so no stuff to screen until the system is well and truly loading.
