pine64 News - Page 12 of 15 - CNX Software

August 27, 2018September 29, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

RockPro64 RK3399 Board Linux Review with Ubuntu 18.04 + LXDE

Let’s do one more RK3399 Linux review using Pine64 RockPro64 development board. After shortly checking out the hardware, I’ll test Ubuntu 18.04 “Bionic” LXDE on the board, test 3D graphics acceleration, video playback, USB storage and network performance among other things on the board. RockPro64 Board Unboxing The board came in a cardboard package, and the sticker made it clear I had received the 2GB LPDDR4 version. Even after FriendlyELEC NanoPi M4 announcement, Rockchip ROCKPro64 is still the cheapest RK3399 development board around, so it should come as no surprise that the board does not come with any accessories by default. Another way to keep the price low was not to include any built-in storage apart from SPI flash, so instead most people will either boot from micro SD card or an eMMC flash module both of which need to be purchase separately. Another cost-saving is the lack of built-in […]

July 13, 2018July 14, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 42 Comments

Pine64 Launches a $45 Dual SATA NAS Enclosure for ROCKPro64 Board

ROCKPro64 is one of the most affordable Rockchip RK3399 boards, as you can purchase it for as low as $60 with 2GB RAM, and $80 with 4GB RAM. Pine64 – the company behind the board – also offers add-on boards such as a PCIe card to connect up to two SATA drives. The company has now leveraged the latter in their ROCKPro64 metal desktop/NAS casing specifically designed for ROCKPro64 boards, and capable of holding two 2.5″/3.5″ SATA drives.Key features of ROCKPro64 Desktop/NAS case: Compatible with ROCKPro64 boards only SATA – Accommodates either 2x 2.5″ SATA drives or 2x 3.5″ SATA drives or a mix of 2x 2.5″/3.5″ SATA drives Power Supply – 12V DC Dimensions – 232.4mm (Width) x 105.0mm (Height) x 145.2mm (Depth) The case also ships with 2 SATA data cables, and a custom designed power supply cable as shown below. However, the company also notes that ROCKPro64 […]

July 11, 2018July 11, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

NetBSD ARM64 Images Now Available with SMP for Raspberry Pi 3, Some NanoPi Boards, and Pine64 Boards

NetBSD on Arm started in 2014 with the release of version 7.0, and last year device tree support was implemented and tested on some Allwinner H3 boards. But apparently, so far NetBSD only supported 32-bit Arm, with initial support for 64-bit Arm (ARM64) committed last April, but good progress has been made, and NetBSD ARM64 bootable firmware images are now available with SMP (multi-core) support. Eight different NetBSD ARM64 images can be downloaded: Generic NetBSD 64-bit image for Raspberry Pi 3 and NVIDIA Tegra X1 Two images for FriendlyELEC boards namely NanoPi NEO2 and NEO Plus2 boards Five images for the following Pine64 boards and hardware platforms Pine A64/A64+ Pine A64-LTS / Sopine with baseboard Pine H64 Pinebook laptop ROCK64 (ROCK64Pro not yet supported) The supported hardware matrix shows most features are supported, but there are still a few things missing such as GPU, crypto and MIPI CSI on all […]

June 6, 2018June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux 4.17 Release – Main Changes, Arm & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds released Linux 4.17 last Sunday: So this last week was pretty calm, even if the pattern of most of the stuff coming in on a Friday made it feel less so as the weekend approached. And while I would have liked even less changes, I really didn’t get the feeling that another week would help the release in any way, so here we are, with 4.17 released. No, I didn’t call it 5.0, even though all the git object count numerology was in place for that. It will happen in the not _too_distant future, and I’m told all the release scripts on kernel.org are ready for it, but I didn’t feel there was any real reason for it. I suspect that around 4.20 – which is I run out of fingers and toes to keep track of minor releases, and thus start getting mightily confused – I’ll switch […]

May 28, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

IOTA Tangle is a Blockless Distributed Ledger for the Internet of Things – Running a IOTA Full Node on Rock64 Board

A lot of efforts is going into distributed ledger technologies like the blockchain, and while I keep hearing blockchain is the future, there’s a lot of hype, and so far I have not seen that many practical use cases. But recently I saw Open Source Foundries – a new company announced at Linaro Connect US 2017 – participated in the IOTA blockchain BoF at the OpenIoT Summit 2018 showing a demo publishing sensor data to the IOTA Tangle. So maybe we have a practical application here… Sadly, there’s no video recording of the IOTA blockchain BoF, so instead let’s go to the IOTA website to find out more. What is IOTA? That’s the short description of the solution: An Open-Source Distributed Ledger The first open-source distributed ledger that is being built to power the future of the Internet of Things with feeless microtransactions and data integrity for machines. The key technology […]

April 28, 2018August 31, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

RockPro64 Board is Now Available for $59.99 and Up for Early Adopters & Developers

Several Rockchip RK3399 development boards and SBCs were announced or launched in Q4 2017 / Q1 2018, including Orange Pi RK3399, ODROID-N1, Rock960, etc… RockPro64 was the most aggressively priced of the lot as it was expected to launch for about $60. The good news is that Pine 64 is now selling the first production batch for $59.99 (2GB RAM) or $79.99 (4GB RAM). The less good news is that software is still being worked on so the company only recommends it for early adapters and developers. RockPro64 specifications have changed a bit since the board now comes with LPDDR4 memory instead of LPDDR3: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with 2x ARM Cortex A72 cores up to 2.0 GHz, 4x Cortex A53 cores, and an Arm Mali-T860 MP4 GPU System Memory – 2 or 4 GB LPDDR4, dual channel Storage – eMMC flash module (up to 128 GB), micro […]

February 1, 2018February 1, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 52 Comments

Pine64 ClusterBoard is Now Available for $100 with one Free SOPINE A64 System-on-Module

We’ve previously reported Pine64 had developed “Sopine Clusterboard” for a specific project with support for up to seven SOPINE A64 SoMs powered by Allwinner A64 quad core Cortex A53 processor. At the time (August 2017), it was unclear whether the company would sell to the solution publicly, but they’ve now gone ahead and launched Pine64 ClusterBoard for $99.99 plus shipping, including one free SOPINE A64 module for a limited time. PINE64 ClusterBoard specifications: SoM Slots – 7x SO-DIMM slot for SOPINE A64 modules Connectivity 1x Gigabit Ethernet port (RJ45) All SoMs are connected via Gigabit Ethernet using 7x RTL8211E transceivers and RTL8370N network switch (See diagram below) USB – 7x USB 2.0 port, one per SoM Expansion – Headers for each SoM with UART (serial console), I2C, key ADC, GPIOs, SPI, RESET/POWER 5V and GND Misc – RTC, reset button, optional EEPROM connected to RTL8370N Power Supply 5V/15A via power barrel […]

January 31, 2018February 1, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

Pine H64 Development Board Features Allwinner H6 processor, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 and PCIe for $26 and Up

As expected, Pine64 has now launched Pine H64 development board, powered by Allwinner H6 quad core processor, and contrary to Orange Pi H6 boards, it exposes both Gigabit Ethernet, and a USB 3.0 port, which should please people wanting fast storage combined with Gigabit Ethernet. The board comes in three variants with 1, 2 or 3GB of memory, with all also equipped with a mini PCIe interface, and various I/O headers. Pine H64 specifications: SoC – Allwinner H6 quad core Cortex A53 processor with Arm Mali-T720MP2 GPU System Memory – 1, 2 or 3GB LPDDR3 PC-1600 RAM Storage – 128 Mbit SPI flash, micro SD card slot, and eMMC flash module connector (all bootable) Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz Audio – HDMI audio output, Video Decoding – 10-bit H.265 up to 4K @ 60 fps, VP9 and H.264 up to 4K @ 30 fps […]