ROCKPro64 DOA

[ajtravis]

These boards, without a BIOS/POST like a PC, can be a bit perplexing - they look dead when they're just running an odd build. I remember buying my first PINE device, a 64 A+, and it just sat in a box - I fired it up and nothing. No idea what was going on. Started messing with different builds and it's been running for 5 years with almost zero interruption other than a rare outage (when I haven't had it sipping the juice from my UPS) or reboots after kernel/major armbian upgrades.

they are really some of the coolest little SBCs around, but they are definitely for the patient. I'll walk away sometimes and come back, try a different distro/build, and all is right with the world. Now I feel like building the 4 or 5 devices I haven't done anything with yet, heh

A friend got my RockPro64 to boot from SD - I was trying to boot it from eMMC and this has turned into a huge waste of time and money: In the end, I bought a new eMMC module from the Pine64 online store and I have another ticket open with them now because the eMMC module they sold me is even worse than the one I bought previously. Basically the only way I could get the eMMC to be used as the root filesystem is to run Uboot from either SD or SPI. It is impossible to load Uboot from eMMC directly on the RockPro64. I'm so disappointed with the RockPro64, which seemed to have so much potential. Writing to the eMMC is unreliable under load and causes filesystem corruption. I installed OpenMediaVault, but I don't trust the RockPro64 to store my data. I understand that these are 'hacker' SBC's, but they need to work reliably to be useful and the RockPro64 does not.

Hi,

I've given up waiting for Pine64 to reply to a ticket I opened about this FOUR MONTHS ago: I bought a 16GB FORSEE eMMC that boots and runs OMV without any issues. The eMMC sold to me by Pine64 is clearly not fit for purpose, so I have requested a refund. However, I will not be holding my breath waiting for a reponse. The techinical team at Pine64 are absolutely brilliant, but the customer support team are squandering the goodwill of Pine64 enthusiasts like me. Good customer support is the most cost-effective advertising for the product and the company that manufactures it.

Bye,

  Tony.