RK3399 vs RK3566 ?

[dieselnutjob]

Hi
I am interested in my own open source project to use one of these SoCs.
I wanted to post my thoughts to see if I have come to any incorrect conclusions.

RK3399
More powerful.
Easier to develop mainline Linux on right now, but maybe not a difference longer term?

RK3566
Lower power consumption. Maybe better option without heatsink.
Much newer so maybe better long term.
Newer version of Android.

One thing I like about the RK3399 is that if an internal eMMC is corrupted or something then one can just put an SD card in and boot that, so I would say very safe from bricking. OK that creates some security issues for normal device manufacturers (I guess) but for open source hacking it's great. Is the RK3566 the same?

I already have a Pinebook Pro (RK3399) and I have ordered a Quartz64 to have a look at, I hope it can boot from SD card.

I am interested in Linux and LineageOS porting and development right now.  Interested but not experienced, and I would like to learn.

Anyone think I got any of this wrong please tell me.

[tophneal]

the pine rk3399 products (at least the pbp and rockpro64) use socketed emmcs, so if they corrupt, you can pop them off and replace them. i believe the new quartz64 uses the same emmc modules, too.

[dieselnutjob]

the pine rk3399 products (at least the pbp and rockpro64) use socketed emmcs, so if they corrupt, you can pop them off and replace them. i believe the new quartz64 uses the same emmc modules, too.

That's true of Pine products, but there are Rockchip based products around with non socketed eMMC.

[dieselnutjob]

Why with the ROCKPro64 the default is to boot eMMC and you have to set a jumper disabling eMMC if you want to boot from SD card, whereas, with the PineBook Pro the microSD card is a higher boot priority than the eMMC ?

Given that they have the same SoC what is controlling this boot order?

[tophneal]

in the pbp, the soc boot order is the same as the rockpro. its uboot on the emmc "resets" the boot priority to boot from sd before emmc. i believe there are spi versions of the rp64 uboot that will reprioritize the boot media, as well.

[dieselnutjob]

so the "as supplied" boot order from Rockchip is SPI then eMMC then SDCard ?

I read here https://forum.radxa.com/t/boot-sequence-...-emmc/5266

"eMMC first stage loader -> SD card u-boot -> SD card kernel -> SD card OS"

Why don't pine64 put the first stage loader on the SPI chip? Then if the eMMC was totally corrupted, or overwritten with the wrong OS or something, then one could put an SD card in and it would still boot.

[tophneal]

that decision would fall on the developers rather than pine. pine boards do have spi as first priority, and there are several uboots for the rp64 that can be flashed to the spi. this post details one: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8685

[dieselnutjob]

Are there any other forums around where I can get advice with RK3566 devices (not necessarily Pine64 ones)?
I now have a generic tablet with an RK3566 SoC but I am struggling with it.
For example I was hoping that I could boot BSP Linux on it but with an SD card in there it seems to do absolutely nothing.
My understanding of how the recovery partitions work is also very weak and self compiled Quartz64 images don't appear to have the same recovery capabilities as the DD images.
Alternatively is it ok to discuss non-Pine64 Rockchip devices on this forum?

[TRS-80]

Are there any other forums around where I can get advice with RK3566 devices (not necessarily Pine64 ones)?

There are Armbian forums.  Just make sure you post in Off Topic section, as that is not a supported device!

You also may or may not get much response, because it is some random device.  Which is much harder to develop for, due to lots of reasons.  So, I hope you are up for a challenge / just doing this for fun.

[dieselnutjob]

Are there any other forums around where I can get advice with RK3566 devices (not necessarily Pine64 ones)?

There are Armbian forums.  Just make sure you post in Off Topic section, as that is not a supported device!

You also may or may not get much response, because it is some random device.  Which is much harder to develop for, due to lots of reasons.  So, I hope you are up for a challenge / just doing this for fun.

Interesting forum

BTW. We already have some Armbian for this hardware, but we don't want any association with it.

^^^^  talking about the Quartz64 here https://forum.armbian.com/topic/18894-in...ent=128384