wireless cape bricks the beaglebone

Yes I have tried doing this without the uEnv.txt edits. The wifi cape lights do not even turn on and

worst part is when I get the turned on, I can not log into the beagleboard

Try changing the dtb line from:

dtb=am335x-boneblack-overlay.dtb

TO

dtb=am335x-boneblack-wl1835mod.dtb

Reference:

https://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless-connectivity/other-wireless/f/667/t/738811

I came across a lot of frustration from this discussion, from 2016, 2017, attached to the wireless cape readme file:

BBONE-GATEWAY-CAPE_README_11292016_v0 1.pdf

  (the discussion shows up below the pdf rendering)

M_Hudson points out the the cape enable line in uEnv.txt says to use "BB-BONE-WL183"

While the technical details for the wireless cape say on this page:

Wireless Connectivity Cape for BeagleBone Black

that it uses "WL1837MOD"

Is there a  dtb=am335x-boneblack-wl1837mod.dtb that would work???  Of course, you'd need that dtb file, and I don't see that the instructions say where the file would come from. I see on my BBB-Wireless (not the cape, but the BBB with wireless on the main board), that I have the file mentioned above by Jon Morss,  am335x-boneblack-wl1835mod.dtb  but no wl183 or wl1837.  This is with the debian 9.5 verson (October 2018) .  Maybe an older version of debian had the correct dtb?

I came across a lot of frustration from this discussion, from 2016, 2017, attached to the wireless cape readme file:

BBONE-GATEWAY-CAPE_README_11292016_v0 1.pdf

  (the discussion shows up below the pdf rendering)

M_Hudson points out the the cape enable line in uEnv.txt says to use "BB-BONE-WL183"

While the technical details for the wireless cape say on this page:

Wireless Connectivity Cape for BeagleBone Black

that it uses "WL1837MOD"

Is there a  dtb=am335x-boneblack-wl1837mod.dtb that would work???  Of course, you'd need that dtb file, and I don't see that the instructions say where the file would come from. I see on my BBB-Wireless (not the cape, but the BBB with wireless on the main board), that I have the file mentioned above by Jon Morss,  am335x-boneblack-wl1835mod.dtb  but no wl183 or wl1837.  This is with the debian 9.5 verson (October 2018) .  Maybe an older version of debian had the correct dtb?

Hi thanks for the reply Allen.

The am335x-boneblack-wl1837mod.dtb file is there in the directory /boot/dtbs/4.14.71-ti-r80

All you have to do is use it, and I have tired it with the uboot_overlay_addr0=/lib/firmware/BB-GATEWAY-1837-00A0.dtbo

and without.

Both fail to allow me to Putty back into the Beagle.

When I use am335x-boneblack-wl1837mod.dtb the wifi unit light up (which seems operational ?) and I can no longer putty to the Beagle.

Its a brick.

Can not see video output either.  It becomes useless. I have reloaded the OS about 4 times so far today onto the SD card because the

wrong combination just stops access to the board altogether.

I need help..

TL;DR but, following the links from here:

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-79264/l/wireless-connectivity-cape-for-beaglebone-black#documents

leads to here:

WL18xx First Time Getting Started Guide (Beaglebone) - Texas Instruments Wiki

which leads to here:

WL1835 Cape on BeagleBone with MainLine Kernel Debian Filesystem - Texas Instruments Wiki

which gives instructions on how to build this for the BBB on Debian 8.1 (July 2015 version).  I'm not sure this helps, it's yet another rabbit hole to get lost in.

I am downloading the Debian 8.3 version which is already built.

I tried this line of thinking but can't recall how far back I went.