
Pine64 (64-bit quad core for $15) Quick Start Guide - RayHightower
http://rayhightower.com/blog/2016/04/04/pine64-quick-start-guide-using-mac-os-x/
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aftbit
More RAM than the Raspberry Pi 3 and gigabit ethernet for a lower cost.
However, my experience with ODroid and CHIP has shown me that having a large
developer community is super important. Anybody can whip up a single-board
computer using cheap smartphone SoCs, but getting a solid, reliable kernel
with open source drivers is far from easy.

For example, I was unable to use V4L with my webcam on CHIP. The install was
simple on my RPi. Another - I recently tried to build the dmx_usb kernel
driver on an ODroid C1. Nope, their sources are missing a bunch of headers.

Both of these things were absolutely trivial on an RPi. Just install some
packages and go.

~~~
bratsche
> my experience with ODroid and CHIP has shown me that having a large
> developer community is super important

Did you have a bad experience with these? I was thinking of buying either an
ODroid or Raspberry Pi 3, now I'm curious to hear what your experiences are.

~~~
geerlingguy
It can be a good or bad experience, depending on what exactly you want to do.
specs-wise, there are many options that beat the Pi. But getting certain
things done will be harder (or impossible) on non-Pis, unless you're an
experienced kernel hacker (and even then)...

See my review of the ODROID-C2 / compared to Pi 3 for more thoughts[1]

[1] [http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/review-
odroid-c2-compa...](http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/review-
odroid-c2-compared-raspberry-pi-3-and-orange-pi-plus)

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creshal
> The image will be archived in .rar format. RAR is used because it has a
> higher compression ratio than .zip, and .rar files can store full file
> permissions while compressed.

What is this, 1995?!

(Oh, and it's _super important_ to preserve the permissions of the ISO file
you're dd'ing over the SD card…)

~~~
Esau
More archaic are systems that don't support booting from installation media.
I've noticed this is common on all the low-end boards like this. Why don't any
of them support, say, booting installation media off a USB stick?

~~~
dezgeg
Because these kinds of boards don't typically have BIOS/firmware chips, the
booting options are limited to what is provided by the SoC's boot ROM. An USB
host stack is immensely complicated and as such something that manufacturers
wouldn't want to put in their ROMs (although I recall some Cortex-M0 chips
actually implement this).

Many (maybe even most?) SoCs, including at least all previous Allwinner chips
do support booting directly from SD cards, though.

~~~
gcb0
... flash a "boot from SD card filesystem" firmware in the factory?

~~~
dezgeg
No, the boot ROM supports from booting an SD card. Though not in the sense of
booting any OS like Linux, but booting a board-specific second stage
bootloader like U-Boot.

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coalescence
I ordered (and fully paid for) my 2GB back in January and I'm still waiting
for the order state to change (it's currently unfulfilled). If you look at the
boards, I'm not alone. Apparently it'll arrive in May, so be aware if you
order now, it may be some time.

Also, the images being stored in .rar format is a little crazy. I'm not sure
why that's the case when there are a plethora of other compression formats
more generally used for binary image compression.

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asfarley
This is the 3rd "low cost" Linux board to "come out" in the last year or two
(Chip and RPI Zero) but none of them are available on the market.

All of these projects have endless streams of explanations why the product
isn't available yet: "it's a Kickstarter", "supply chain", blah blah blah.

I don't think it's a coincidence that there are 5 or 6 Linux boards in the $40
range and zero available for purchase in the $10 range.

~~~
CountSessine
Yeah - this is my complaint. I really want a Pi-zero. Or ten, really. I want
to be able to put these in all sorts of places where a $40 board wouldn't make
sense. But you can't get a Pi-zero for love or for money right now.

The excuse that's given on the Pi foundation forums is that they're
prioritizing education production? But what exactly is the hold-up? Is it
really that hard to get time on a pick-and-place machine in China? Is order
fulfillment scaling badly somehow? Is the supply of the Broadcom chip low
right now?

I want the Pi-zero, and right now it's nothing but vapor-ware!

~~~
monochromatic
Out of curiosity, what would you do with ten Pi Zeros? I like the idea of
them, but I'm not sure what I'd actually use one for.

~~~
Chris2048
Embed them in plastic, and make a fancy coffee table.

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rajangdavis
I put money into the Pine64 Kickstarter campaign back in December and have yet
to receive the unit. Part of the delay was adding on peripherals, but there
wasn't really an indication that there would be much of delay.

Raspberry Pi announced the Raspberry Pi 3 on Leap Day (I think); I ordered it,
it came within 2 weeks (on Pi Day!). Installed the Recalbox OS and the Pi 3
works like a champ! it streams videos from an external hard drive and handles
ROM's and emulators really well. I highly recommend this if you want a media
center and more.

I hope playing with the Pine64 will make up for the wait time, but the
execution on the campaign was a bit lacking (not that I could have done
better). Still pretty excited, just was hoping to have it on time.

~~~
ascorbic
There's a big difference between backing a project on Kickstarter and buying a
product that's already on sale. Kickstarter is not a shop. I also backed it on
Kickstarter, and as with everything I back I treat the shipping dates as a
very optimistic estimate. I bought the Pi 3 on launch day too and it came next
day, but that was buying from a shop. I had different expectations. The crap
that the project creators have been getting is completely out of proportion.
In a recent backer update, they said that they've had death threats, including
one guy who actually turned up at their office to threaten them over a $22
pledge.

They asked for $31k and took $1.7 million. It's hardly surprising it's taken
longer than predicted. I'm looking forward to receiving mine but I'm not
stressing over getting it quickly. I'll play with the Pi in the meantime.

~~~
rajangdavis
I totally agree with you on the point that the hate the creators are receiving
is ridiculous.

I had never backed a Kickstarter project before but had heard of stories of
projects not delivering on time (or at all). I was (naively) hoping that this
would not be the case. Just thought it was interesting that Raspberry Pi
Foundation was able to come out with a 64 bit single board computer without a
hitch, but I chalk that up to having much more experience to consumer demand
in this space.

I am loving the Pi 3 and can't wait to get the Pine64! Do you have any
specific plans for it?

~~~
ascorbic
I've backed lots of hardware projects on Kickstarter and run one myself [1],
and ones that deliver on time are a small minority. Most are at least 2-3
months late (including mine).

I haven't decided what I'll use it for yet. Right now I'm making a robot with
my 4 year old daughter using a Pi Zero.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vela/vela-one-the-
world...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vela/vela-one-the-worlds-first-
high-speed-led-flash)

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damurdock
As a heads up, like the commenter on your blog mentioned, you can write to
`/dev/rdisk?` to speed up your transfer. You can also view dd's progress by
using pv (available in Homebrew) like: `pv /path/to/image.iso | sudo dd
of=/dev/rdisk? bs=?M`

That aside, interesting article. All these new ultra-cheap computers are
exciting.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
You can also run dd with `status=progress`, at least on recent versions.

~~~
bratch
And you can also kill -USR1 $(pidof dd) to get the current progress and
transfer rate.

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esaym
Hmm I never heard of the "Parallella". This one has 64 cores but never seems
to have been released: [http://www.adapteva.com/white-
papers/parallella-64-cores/](http://www.adapteva.com/white-
papers/parallella-64-cores/)

Is there anything else like that on the market for cheap? I'd actually like to
play around with a high core count chip. "Only" 4 cores is for kids :)

~~~
ChrisGranger
I was one of the Kickstarter backers for the Parallella a few years back. The
64 cores are in the Epiphany IV coprocessor, while the board itself has two
ARM cores and would behave a lot like the RPi and similar if the Epiphany
wasn't taken advantage of, assuming you were able to get your hands on one of
the early 64-core boards.

The 16-core Epiphany III-based Parallella is available at Amazon.

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wyldfire
Worth noting: $15+7 units are sold out and the $19+7, $29+7 units are
"Currently Scheduled to Ship by May 2016 – May ship earlier but not later."

~~~
ant6n
Their display spec is a bit funny: "PINE64 features Allwinner’s SmartColor2.0
Technology with integrated display engine up to 1920×1200 HDMI v1.4 supported
up to 4K." \- which one is it, 1920x1200 or 4K?

~~~
wyldfire
Speculation: it's _from_ 1920x1200 up to 4k?

~~~
ant6n
HDMI should always support 720p and 180p, which are both less than 1920x1200.

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minionslave
How does this compare to a Raspberry PI?

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andrew13
I received mine last week. I've been concerned over the linux development as
that was the primary reason I bought the board. It's coming along nicely due
to a few key members of the community. If I had the ability to do it over
again, I'd still probably buy it. If the Pi 3 had a 2GB RAM option, I'd
reverse that decision.

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YngwieMalware
Ordered mine after seeing Ray speak at Ancient City Ruby conf last week
explaining parallelism and its benefits. I have no idea what I want to do with
it but I'm excited to have a tiny computer. Maybe I'll make a custom case for
it and use it as a DSP computer.

~~~
rajangdavis
Hey, what were you planning on using to make it work as a DSP computer? Are
you thinking of using something like Pure Data?

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Zecc
> dd is the “copy and convert” command. The letters “dd” have nothing to do
> with what the tool actually does.

It dumps data.

~~~
fluffysquirrel
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.folklore.computers...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.folklore.computers/HAWoZ8g-xYk/HDUVxwTVLKAJ)

" > "Dennis Ritchie" <d...@bell-labs.com> wrote

>> Spurious. dd was always named after JCL dd cards. > > Alright, I'll bite:
What did _that_ "dd" stand for?

I hesitate to leap in front of Dennis Ritchie, but ...

On IBM mainframes, programs are started by "submitting" them in JCL ("Job
Control language") to JES, the Job Entry System.

One of the most important statements in JCL is the DD statement. DD stands for
"Data Definition". It is used to define the data (duh ;-) that is used when
the job is run - input files, output files etc.

JCL has a "unique" flavour; it is utterly unlike normal programming languages
and is archane, cryptic, obscure, complex and rude. It is also ugly and
stupid. However there is so much JCL in the world that, hell, we still have to
live with it - even after thirty years of Unix ;-).

The Unix dd command copies data from one place to another, rather like a
typical DD card in a JCL stack.

The "if=", "of=", "bs=", etc, parameters to the Unix dd command retain some of
the characteristic syntactic idioms of JCL (not to say that the dd command is
as ugly as JCL - it just has a faint echo of the JCL syntax).

For a mainframe guy, the dd command on Unix gives a nice homely touch.

Cheers Andrew "

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sna1l
What are some cool projects one could do with this vs a raspberry pi?

~~~
samandiriel
I just received mine last week, and installed Remix OS without much problem
(other than having to dig out a Windows netbook so as to use the Phoenix SD
card burning app).

I am going to try mine out as a multimedia/game box for my den TV for
starters, as there are lots of fun little games the kids & teens like to play
on Android. I've had no issues with hooking up dongle-based wireless keyboards
and game controllers.

