Would Pine64 ever consider making a desktop board in mini atx format with a couple of PCIe slots and maybe even expandable RAM? It would be awesome to be able to just chuck it into an old case and have a functioning modern ARM system that you can expand with off the shelf components. Would be great for development, home servers, media centeres etc.

I got manjaro arm booting to a full DE (mate).  For the moment no sound and no wifi but everything else seems to work.  Didn't test if the usb3 port is working as usb2 or usb3.

The v2.1 SSD adapter that is shipped with the initial (first three?) Pinebook Pro batches has a couple of problems. In particular the back of the adapter board interferes with the operation of the trackpad once the case is reassembled and the ribbon cable doesn't quite match the layout of the mother- and adapter- boards.

I'm told there is a plan to offer replacement adapter boards that overcome these issues... but if you have a Pinebook Pro and a new SSD in your paws right now then there are hacks that allow you to install the SSD. Note that this is an unofficial guide and, whilst I have put warnings on the tricky bits, the decision to proceed is yours and yours alone! Please do not undertake these changes if you cannot afford to fix any damage that results.

The instructions do not include a guide for correct removal and replacement of the bottom panel (look on the wiki) and these instructions also assume you will take appropriate precautions to prevent damage from static electricity.

1. Firstly we must remove the section of the adapter board that interferes with the track pad. Score a line between the Pine logo and the text. The line should be a right angles to the adapter board itself. Cut the board along this line. I used a Dremel with a cutting disc but a hacksaw would probably also work. If using a hacksaw cut with the saw blade at a shallow angle from the flat side of the board (e.g. don't try to cut the edge side directly) and expect to replace the blade because circuit boards are made of pretty tough material. In all cases make sure you cut the board a long way from anything electronic, the filings will include plenty of copper. Clean up the end with sandpaper as needed.

2. Remove the sticky tape that holds down the cabling the is routed in the bottom corner of the machine (middle of the diagram below).

3. Re-route the trackpad ribbon cable to ensure it is fully clear of the SSD adapter. This means adding three new folds to replace the single fold using for the factory routing. The new folds can be fairly light since the fold only needs to be enough to allow the cable to hold its shape. Any more than that risks breaking the wires in the cable.

4. Replace the sticky tape and use it to hold the newly routed trackpad cable in place.

5. Add the SSD to the adapter board and secure in place. I used a small cable tie to avoid leaving a residue on the SSD but I suspect tape would be more secure! If using tape ensure the screw hole are still accesible.

6. Screw the adapter in place (3 black screws from the SSD kit).

7. Attach the ribbon cable to the motherboard. The connector has a tiny plastic locking bar: gently lift the bar, push fit the cable and lower the bar again.

8. Attach the cable to the SSD adapter. The fit is very tight and will require a couple of small folds to get it to reach. Ensure the cable is squarely fitted into the socket before lowering the locking bar.

For reference, below is a picture of the installation in my machine.

I love swaywm and Im happy to report it runs great on the pinebook pro. Here are some things you can throw in your config for sway in order to get started quickly on the pinebook pro.

Please note: I am using the default Manjaro Preview Build 2

Using ayufan's buster minimal image, I noticed uboot seems to ignore the boot partition and instead looks at the boot folder in the root partition.  So if I update extlinux to load additional modules and look at sata for the root partition, it will ignore the changes because the system writes them to the boot partition instead of where uboot actually looks for it.

I have my root moved to an hard drive on sata side and want to use the SD card only for boot, but I seem to be missunderstanding something about how the boot process works.

Since a large percentage of Pinebook Pro owners will be opening up their laptops   and most of us multiple times.

 There is one Little part we cannot do without.


 The little heat transfer pad for the cpu  ! !


I am certain we cannot go without that,  BUT    I do not see it for sale at the store  ?

The first time I opened my PBP it was stuck to the case, the second time it was stuck to the cpu,

   That shows me it is not permanently attached to ether.

I would really like to buy a few of those before something happens to the original or I lose it.

   PLEASE

If you need an easy way to write a new OS to a micro SDcard you can now use Etcher on the Pinebook Pro.

Available from the Swift-Arm Repository

I can't share the connection via smartphone in USB or BT.
In both cases the telephone is detected but in LV the network connection is in failure.
And in USB my PBP only sees the data.

Same problem with Debian or Bionic versions and kernels 4.4.190 or 196

I share by wifi access point so it's not really problematic but I like to understand well

Just over a week into ownership my lovely new PineBook Pro seems to have given up the ghost! When powering on, I am presented with an awful coil whine from the machine and a blank display (with backlight turned on). I've attempted disconnecting the battery and resetting using the switch on the device but to no avail! The whine seems to stop when I disconnect the display though! Any suggestions? Really disappointed that an otherwise brilliant machine seems dead to the world now!

I notice that extlinux.conf contains multiple entries, clearly organized as if I should be seeing some sort of menu at boot. Yet, I don't.

Three obvious possibilities:

- There's not actually a menu
- There's a menu, but it's not enabled
- There's a menu and it's enabled, but it goes out on the serial port

Is there a way to get a visible boot menu?

I looked into doing this with syslinux/extlinux on x86 and it seems that those methods involve adding executable things to /boot/extlinux. All the things I found were 32- or 64-bit x86, which obviously(?) won't work on the PBP.