It's probably been eighteen months since I first got my hands a few custom Beaglebone Black boards, saved from the dumpster. Unfortunately, the boards didn't work right away. Now, this was my first time working with one of these boards, or any single board computer for that matter, so I wasn't sure if the problem was something I was doing, or something wrong with the boards themselves (perhaps why they were headed for the dumpster in the first place). It has taken me quite a long time, and a large amount of effort, to get these boards to actually start booting, but damn it, I did it. And here's what I learned along the way.