LAN/NIC problem

[tkaiser]

My original plan in getting 5x Pine64 was to play around with Gluster and maybe Tahoe LAFS.

Well, if it's just about playing around then such storage cluster setups are nice. But anyone trying this out should keep in mind that the added redundancy with more cluster nodes is pretty useless unless all nodes use ECC memory (which is not the case here and with any other affordable ARM board out there). We should also keep in mind that no one so far tested DRAM reliability for Pine64+ so maybe the 672 MHz used are too high (when we -- linux-sunxi community -- did that for H3 devices we had to realize that the 672 MHz there don't work on all boards which is why we at Armbian chose to use 624 MHz on all H3 devices).

Anyway, there are a few more use cases where Pine64+'s GbE implementation can shine, for example running the boards without local storage at all (rootfs on NFS, maybe booting through FEL -- a pretty cool feature of all Allwinner boards). This is also something I wanted to test out (NFS and general network tunables) but no Pine64+ left to test with and fortunately two Pine64+ are on it's way (thanks TL Lim!).

Since we're already at it (netbooting), my wishlist for a new Pine64+ PCB revision:

• a small SPI NOR flash on board (to store at least u-boot and to be able to run then from USB storage or network)
  
• 1 or better 2 additional custom leds (able to be used for feedback which will greatly increase user experience and reduce false 'DOA' cases)
  
• a barrel jack (preferably 4.0/1.7mm) instead of Micro USB for DC-IN