Hi Everyone,
I know that you're all eagerly awaiting your Pinebook Pros. Now that I have a little bit of free time I figured that I should update you all on what's been going on behind the scenes.
TL : DR : we hit two roadblocks that delayed the shipping process by a few weeks (2-3) - but it should be all sorted now. The first batch ought to go out (hopefully early) next week. October batches may or may not be affected; we'll likely make up some of the lost time
Here are the details:
The first problem was related to the Pinebook Pro not powering on in the event that the battery was disconnected from the main board. While this will likely not affect the grand majority of users, a suitable work-around had to be put in place in the event Pinebook Pro has to be ran without a battery. There are now two jumper cables on the PCB that can be bridged to power up the Pinebook Pro without the battery plugged in. Here is the engineering notice.
The second problem we ran into is an incompatibility between factory workflow and the RK3399 SOC boot-sequence. Prior to flashing the Debian MATE image, the factory preloads a testing build on the eMMC to determine if a Pinebook Pro unit is functional. This is after the unit is screwed together and 'completed'. Unfortunately, the inherent RK3399 boot sequence priorities eMMC over SD card, so flashing from SD / USB 2.0 is literally impossible using the build that the factory uses (NB. the custom Debian build permits SD booting prior to eMMC; this described scenario relates only the the factory OS build). In result, all units had to be unscrewed and re-flashed with the shipping build by hand and put back together. As you can surely appreciate, this takes time.
This isn't the factory's fault per se, they are just accustomed to working with SOCs which have a boot sequence hierarchy akin to the original Pinebook, which uses the Allwinner A64; this SOC priorities SD over eMMC in the boot hierarchy. In the future, the default Debian MATE build will be flashed onto the eMMC while all testing will be done from SD.
We expect that we'll make up much of the lost time in future batches, but the deadlines may shift a week or two forward in time.
So, the first batch should now be going out in just a few days, while the October pre-orders (forum member + public) may be suffer a slight delay. I'll keep you posted.
Sorry for the delay!
I know that you're all eagerly awaiting your Pinebook Pros. Now that I have a little bit of free time I figured that I should update you all on what's been going on behind the scenes.
TL : DR : we hit two roadblocks that delayed the shipping process by a few weeks (2-3) - but it should be all sorted now. The first batch ought to go out (hopefully early) next week. October batches may or may not be affected; we'll likely make up some of the lost time
Here are the details:
The first problem was related to the Pinebook Pro not powering on in the event that the battery was disconnected from the main board. While this will likely not affect the grand majority of users, a suitable work-around had to be put in place in the event Pinebook Pro has to be ran without a battery. There are now two jumper cables on the PCB that can be bridged to power up the Pinebook Pro without the battery plugged in. Here is the engineering notice.
The second problem we ran into is an incompatibility between factory workflow and the RK3399 SOC boot-sequence. Prior to flashing the Debian MATE image, the factory preloads a testing build on the eMMC to determine if a Pinebook Pro unit is functional. This is after the unit is screwed together and 'completed'. Unfortunately, the inherent RK3399 boot sequence priorities eMMC over SD card, so flashing from SD / USB 2.0 is literally impossible using the build that the factory uses (NB. the custom Debian build permits SD booting prior to eMMC; this described scenario relates only the the factory OS build). In result, all units had to be unscrewed and re-flashed with the shipping build by hand and put back together. As you can surely appreciate, this takes time.
This isn't the factory's fault per se, they are just accustomed to working with SOCs which have a boot sequence hierarchy akin to the original Pinebook, which uses the Allwinner A64; this SOC priorities SD over eMMC in the boot hierarchy. In the future, the default Debian MATE build will be flashed onto the eMMC while all testing will be done from SD.
We expect that we'll make up much of the lost time in future batches, but the deadlines may shift a week or two forward in time.
So, the first batch should now be going out in just a few days, while the October pre-orders (forum member + public) may be suffer a slight delay. I'll keep you posted.
Sorry for the delay!