(04-30-2022, 06:01 PM)TRS-80 Wrote:(04-09-2022, 12:37 PM)enorbet2 Wrote: Am I correct in assuming that the board should at least attempt to power up with nothing connected but power? What can I research and check?
Good luck, and let us know how it goes.
Thank you TRS-80, that was very helpful. As I stated I'm quite unfamiliar with ARM so I took n o chqances, especially since Ameridroid, the company from which I bought is seemed very solid and perfectly willing to RMA the board should it be DOA. I'm repurposing an old eSATA dual bay external standalone enclosure as it has adequate size is ruggedly built and has a sizable fan as well as a hard-switched AT type PSU providing both 12v and 5v at roughly 50-60 watts. Being unsure of ARM requirements and the actual specs on the PSU (almost no info on it) I bought the recommended power brick (5A, so I could use it generally on other projects) as well as an eMMC and a MicroSD. After flashing they both booted just fine! fan spins, LEDs light up, all is well.
In fact, being a 20+ years Slackware devotee I even flashed SPl (to boot from SATA) and installed full Aarch-Slackware-Current. I'm still learning the differences but I am making some progress. I'm trying to get a web-based login going something like Cockpit or Webmin... wish me luck. Initially I wanted to enable dual boot so I could choose between different distros at boot time but apparently some bug required disabling USB in Uboot, so a SDerial Console is required and I haven't messed with those since DOS Laplink days so I'm holding off on that and just using the eMMC for alternates.
I'm very impressed with RockPro64 performance and this is a very fun learning experience. Thanks again for your considered and helpful response.
BTW the onboard AT PSU works a treat powering the board, the 80mm case fan, 1 SSD and 2 x 2TB Seagate spinners in RAID 1. Even with the tiny Pine hs/fan on CPU, the sheer air volume moving inside that case keeps the CPU below 46C. It runs great!