I thought I'd try this SBC as an alternative to an RPi but with PCIe. I received 2 units FedEx Express from Huaqiangbei. I planned on using them for distributed storage.
+
i. Fast shipping.
ii. Small form factor.
iii. Holds 2 3.5" HDDs
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0. The case fan doesn't spin. Maybe there are magic patches, it just doesn't work.
1. Severe Linux fragmentation. There is no one working distro. There are some old Linux kernel forks but they don't work and they failed at upstreaming. I tried a total of 9 images of 5 distros. Absolute hot mess on fire in a dumpster in another dumpster on fire.
2. Build quality is marginal. Lots of screws. Lots of time to build. The case is still warped and doesn't make much mechanical or cooling sense.
3. CPU heatsink in the wrong orientation by 90 degrees and blocked by any PCIe card.
3. PCIe cards plain don't work because the PCIe subsystem doesn't work.
4. The hardware is old. Very old.
5. There are no paper instructions. Putting it together is 100% guesswork.
6. The wiki doesn't have much more than superficial details. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/ROCKPro64
7. Only works with <= 2m HDMI cables.
8. Confusing UX because it doesn't start video until after it boots. If it crashes or is still booting, you'll never know unless using a serial console.
9. The power supply arcs at the connector badly when plugging in.
10. Doesn't include any spare screws, and not enough to secure 2 HDDs.
