Got it today...DAMN its big??

[tkaiser]

Pine64 has a lot more expansion pins, and connectors than most of the SBC's I've seen.

Most likely that's the real reason pointed out by Jon Smirl: http://hackaday.com/2016/04/21/pine64-th...nt-2997829 (keep in mind that he's an electronics developer with access to confidental information)

[Brian Beuken]

The Olimex-A64 (which isn't available yet) is a bit smaller according to picture, but doesn't have as much headers.
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/...d-is-live/

Another good point- Pine64 has a lot more expansion pins, and connectors than most of the SBC's I've seen.

ermm....I don't think you've seen many then? Here's a selection of mine, the Beagleboard XM being the biggest until the arrival of the Pine which dwarfs them all I'll take an updated pic soon.

Sure, it has more GPIO's than most, but did you need that many, and its possible keep the credit card size factor with 2 rows? A few others can boast similar GPIO, Beagleboard and C.H.I.P. for example, the latter having 80GPIO and tiny form for $9

But 2 USB, power, SD slots, Ethernet and audio, hdmi are actually pretty much the standard for the bulk of SBC's which also tend to boast onboard wifi/BT Many have 3 or 4 USB's on board mic's and eMMC mounts, camera and lcd panel outs.. There's nothing remarkable at all about the Pine's connections?

As I say, I am by no means unhappy with the board (though I am yet to get it running) but I think you're overselling it, and twisting in the wind a little to justify that,  the size is certainly odd, I don't see how you can justify it with price considerations, or calling it a developer target...they are all developer boards?

Isn't it simpler to say it was much easier to design at that size, rather than going to a layered, smaller board?

Anyway, I've finally finished downloading Debian, so am going to try and fire it up,

[pine.tree]

I personally wasn't part of the design process- but I would agree with the point that less layers makes for easier designing. 

All boards going out are technically the "beta", it does all these things that a typical SBC does, but it isn't smaller or as small as others. The current design was (from what I gather) intended to show what the Pine64 could do, to get the Kickstarter going for future (more refined) Pine64's to exist.

[Brian Beuken]

hmmm ok, not sure I quite agree with the idea that this is a Beta, that should have been created long before the release, this is available for public use, it's sold several 10K's , so while I do get that its a 1st product and there will be refined in anticipation of a Mk2 Board, defining it as a beta is kinda strange.

Anyway....it matters not, I'm not trying to jump on a negative bandwagon, clearly its a young board with an immature software base and everyone needs to take a deep breath and jump in and see what can be done. I just hope it does indeed do what a typical SBC does, though so far I've not seen it.

I just downloaded Debian, from the wiki, took 13 hours...........burned it to SD with Win32 Disk Imager, and....it fails to boot.....hmmm
so trying the Remix OS which I was able to torrent a little quicker, while I download Ubuntu for the next 13 hours.
If that fails also I'll try using the other SD burner suggested...but really...this 1st burn, should be a no brainer???

You, or the people in charge of the software distribution, need to deal with that as a priority.

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Remix OS works fine....never used it before but will have a play with it, and see what it can do.

[tkaiser]

The Olimex-A64 (which isn't available yet) is a bit smaller according to picture, but doesn't have as much headers.
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/...d-is-live/

Martin, but you know that the smaller Olimex Lime/Lime2 boards all expose 160 GPIO pins? Allwinner's reference design was single-sided, the Pine64 is as well. It's all about costs (and margins).



Anyway: I don't get why people discuss/justify the size of the board that was known from the beginning and is easy to understand when you turn it just around. When looking at the several POT Add-ons the larger size also has its advantages too.

There are other areas that need attention. The lack of documentation, the fact that only the manipulated/wrong/crappy/bloated OS images are promoted instead of the original. The easy ways to avoid the 'DOA experience'...

[Brian Beuken]

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Its a perfectly valid topic for discussion, size can be an issue for some who want small compact boards.. I genuinely misread the dimensions as cm rather than inches and looking at the KS video again, its only now I realise how long I've missed that point...so it was an complete shock when it arrived, and I am curious to know why it is the size it is.

The software issues are normal for infant boards, they will presumably get better with input from the community, but indeed supplying images that don't work is a killer blow to the good feelings that this board had on its announcement.
Thanks for the link to Longsleep's ubuntu, I'll try that out, as I'm not really mad keen on Remix or Android.

hmmm longsleeps unbuntu also fails to complete a boot..stopping at 17.260727 lots of no such device errors.


upsetting...

[Brian Beuken]

strange, ok I tried a different card 16GB class 10 and this time burned debian.
this time it worked....I have Debian running....

[tkaiser]

hmmm longsleeps unbuntu also fails to complete a boot..stopping at 17.260727 lots of no such device errors.

This image is known to work. I hope you verified image integrity (the 'gpg --with-fingerprint xenial-pine64-*.xz.asc' stuff) and checked your SD card? Next step I would do would be to either measure available voltage when booting (Euler connector pins 2 and 9 or 4 and 6) or directly power the board through these pins.

I had boot endless bootloops just recently at second 15 a few days ago. The culprit was a connected keyboard with an optical mouse plugged in which seems to behave badly regarding power peak consumption. And I was also powering the board through an AWG24 rated cable (not the usual ultra short AWG20 cable). So I would assume at this stage maybe a bit more happens, then consumption increases, voltage drops, boot fails.

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strange, ok I tried a different card 16GB class 10 and this time burned debian.

I'll never understand when the Pine64 guys start to warn regarding well known issue N° 2 that prevents booting: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=514

It's such a common issue that this should be addressed with a FAQ entry and not some post hidden somewhere inside a weird forum full of the same questions again and again.

[pine.tree]

Hey, we're willing to keep answering individual questions. It would be good to put the typical issues in a FAQ somewhere on the Wiki. I don't have wiki credentials, so i can't add a section there. I guess for now, the best FAQ we have is the 6 most common reasons post, on the weird forum

[Brian Beuken]

Cards all checked out, high quality, but I did notice something odd....if I don't have my ethernet cable plugged in, it hangs....or rather it appears to hang, for up to 2 mins...then goes to the log in screen.

So it maybe my failures to boot were due to not having my board connected to ethernet...when plugged in, the board boots on all cards...it just takes ages and looks like a hang if you don't have the ethernet cable plugged in.


I'll be happy to post this strange quirk on the FAQ thread.

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[quote pid='8354' dateline='1462367420']

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strange, ok I tried a different card 16GB class 10 and this time burned debian.

I'll never understand when the Pine64 guys start to warn regarding well known issue N° 2 that prevents booting: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=514

It's such a common issue that this should be addressed with a FAQ entry and not some post hidden somewhere inside a weird forum full of the same questions again and again.
[/quote]

ah  the famous tk sarcasm, the internet wouldnt be the same without it.

the reason I said it was strange, is that my cards are all fine, I check them out and was confident they are up to the job...I then worked out what was different, and the only thing I found was I'd plugged in the ethernet cable....voila, I discovered the problem...its still strange but now I can progress.

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This image is known to work. I hope you verified image integrity (the 'gpg --with-fingerprint xenial-pine64-*.xz.asc' stuff) and checked your SD card? Next step I would do would be to either measure available voltage when booting (Euler connector pins 2 and 9 or 4 and 6) or directly power the board through these pins.

confirmed, I tried again on the 8Gb card, it boots, but....takes several minutes to go to login if the Ethernet is not connected,  
about 30-40secs if it is connected.