YESS! I did it. Managed to install #NetBSD to the BeagleBone Black's EMMC, AND downgrade u-boot to the 2018 version as the 2022 version has something broken with USB apparently. (Yet to test if I can get it to work now). Anyway the process is actually FAR simpler on #NetBSD than what many tutorials suggest. No need to dd at specific offsets by hand. Get a Live SD card image for NetBSD from https://armbsd.org and image it to card Boot said live image by holding down the S2 button next to the SD card slot with the card inserted. Login is "root" with no password set initially. From the live environment, download the same image again and dd it to the EMMC storage. The target device is usually /dev/rld1c - but check if your emmc is ld0 or ld1 .¹ Run, # ftp https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/arm/NetBSD-11.0-release/NetBSD-11-earmv7hf--bone-black.img.gz # zcat NetBSD-11.0-release/NetBSD-11-earmv7hf--bone-black.img.gz | progress dd of=/dev/rld1c Shutdown; remove SD, reboot. It should now boot from EMMC. To flash the old version of u-boot Shutdown. Insert live NetBSD SD card again. Boot from SD as before. Force-Install the OLD u-boot package and flash it to emmc using installboot: # pkg_add -f https://archive.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc-archive/packages/NetBSD/earmv7hf/8.0_2020Q4/All/u-boot-beagleboneblack-2018.11nb4.tgz # installboot -u /dev/rld1c /usr/pkg/share/u-boot/beagleboneblack Shutdown. Remove SD. Boot. Now on boot it should report, U-Boot 2018.11nb4 (Oct 01 2020 - 12:12:48 +0000) Magic! -- ¹ Do this by running dmesg | grep ld and confirming by checking drive sizes. Double-check with disklabel ldN if needed.