[HN Gopher] Orange Pi 800 Keyboard PC - A Raspberry Pi 400 alter...
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Orange Pi 800 Keyboard PC - A Raspberry Pi 400 alternative powered
by RK3399
Author : zdw
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-06-05 14:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnx-software.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnx-software.com)
| worik wrote:
| A VGA port? Really?
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I mean I wouldn't want to splurge for an expensive display with
| such an underpowered device, so people with unused VGA monitors
| seems like a good target market for this device.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Just looking at it reminds me of the original "keyboard
| computers" like the TRS-80, the C64/VIC-20. Just kind of gave
| me a sense of nostalgia for a second.
| adolph wrote:
| Seems to have more availability than RPi.
| kjs3 wrote:
| The RPi 400 seems pretty easy to get. I ordered 2 a couple of
| weeks ago and got them with no problem. It's any sort of
| regular RPi 4 board that's unobtainium, except occasionally as
| a bundle with a ton of stuff you may or may not want/need.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The store links aren't working here, so I guess it's a tie.
|
| They could, at least, use different colors not to look like
| such a RPi rip-off.
| hkgjjgjfjfjfjf wrote:
| earthscienceman wrote:
| As somebody who just wasted too much of his life trying to figure
| out a software issue on another RK3399 powered SBC, let me tell
| you that software documentation/support is worth so much more
| than features or power. If the software that can run on these are
| cobbled together semi-proprietary chains of mishmashed crap,
| these boards will continue to be mediocre at best.
|
| Which! For the record... makes me very sad. There's a reason I
| bought the board I bought. On paper it seemed great. But the boot
| process was entirely undocumented and I ran into so many issues
| with kernel compatibility and featureset for their custom images.
| megous wrote:
| > If the software that can run on these are cobbled together
| semi-proprietary chains of mishmashed crap, these boards will
| continue to be mediocre at best.
|
| What part of SW needed for RK3399 is that? To me pretty much
| all from bootloader to kernel is mainline in various projects
| and FOSS. So far it was fairly straightforward use mainline
| APIs trying to make cameras work via ISPs, RGA for image
| rotation, Hnatro for JPEG encoding in HW, etc. etc.
|
| Very few small bugs here and there that can be easily fixed.
|
| I've seen much worse. TRMs are available. Various other PDFs
| from Rockchip can be found, too (even some obscure ones about
| camera calibration, and stuff like that).
| Limb wrote:
| I have a question regarding "mainline" that I hope someone
| could help clarify.
|
| What is the difference (in terms of coding, etc.) between
| mainlining support for a chip into Linux versus pinning it to
| a specific kernel revision? What makes it easy to bring a
| chip up on a specific kernel version,but not easy to submit
| that to the mainline kernel so future versions of the kernel
| are compatible?
|
| Are there significant changes between kernel versions that
| require someone to be an active maintainer for the specific
| chip, making sure changes to the kernel stay compatible with
| the chip? And thus most manufacturer don't care enough to
| keep supporting future versions once they get on specific
| kernel version working?
| forty wrote:
| Rebasing (possibly shitty) patches from the SBC vendor to a
| recent kernel can be non trivial in my experience (as
| someone who have 0 knowledge of the Linux kernel code, so
| I'm a good baseline to define what's trivial ^^). And yes
| most vendors are will ship one working kernel source and
| forget about it forever right after :) even vendors that
| are not the worse depend on drivers that are provided by
| the SoC vendor, and might be stuck because rebasing a GPU
| driver might even be hard for them I guess.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| To have code included in mainline you need to have
| reasonably sane code in the first place, and then invest
| some time working with upstream maintainers to address
| their concerns. On the other hand vendor code dumps are
| usually haphazardly put together garbage that nobody wants
| to touch.
| marcodiego wrote:
| That is why I refuse to buy anything that is not supported by
| armbian.
| rjsw wrote:
| What doesn't work? Getting NetBSD to work well on this class of
| SBC hasn't been too hard.
|
| I probably need to try to get a RPi of some kind though.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| This has not been my experience with rk3399 SBCs. The boot
| process is not only documented, but entirely blob free (from
| uboot to tf-a to the kernel).
|
| Recently I even got suspend to ram working on my rk3399 powered
| pinebook pro, which was one of the few items I had not been
| able to get working with a mainline stack.
|
| Hardware video decoding does require a recent kernel and
| gstreamer, but again it is fairly well documented and entirely
| mainline.
|
| Don't the RPI boards require blobs to boot the GPU, which boots
| the rest of the board? And hardware video decoding requires
| paying extra and using a proprietary blob?
|
| That said, this device (and the RPi 400) seem really wacky to
| me and I doubt I would ever buy one. I would not want to tell
| my grandparents "sorry printer does not work because arm" and
| the keyboard is way too sucky for me. Also no track point? That
| would be great for this form factor.
| cevn wrote:
| Do you have suspend to ram with working audio when it comes
| back? That's my final hurdle.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Don't the RPI boards require blobs to boot the GPU, which
| boots the rest of the board? And hardware video decoding
| requires paying extra and using a proprietary blob?
|
| Yes, Raspberry Pi hardware is stunningly awful and succeeds
| only through sheer ecosystem size, community dedication, and
| a company that's willing to ship something that works and try
| to make the thing reasonable in spite of having built it on
| completely unreasonable Hardware.
| Matsta wrote:
| From the reviews I've seen over the years for the Rk3399, even
| when the software side is all working, it seems to be a bit of
| a disappointing chip.
|
| My guess with a lot of RK3399 devices popping up is due to a
| couple of things: 1. The limited supply of budget SoCs due to
| the chip shortage and 2. Rockchip trying to clear stock for
| when RK3588 boards finally start to ship. Of course, we'll be
| back to square one on the software part.
|
| I do see the Jasper Lake mini PCs getting cheaper and cheaper,
| and I see that as more of a competitor to SBCs as there doesn't
| seem to be as many stock issues compared to Rpi4's and by the
| time you buy a Raspberry Pi, SD card, heatsink and power supply
| it does end up being not much cheaper.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >If the software that can run on these are cobbled together
| semi-proprietary chains of mishmashed crap
|
| Like these weirdo Broadcom chips in Raspberry Pis?
| andrewstuart wrote:
| No ARM system is viable except Raspberry Pi and Apple as a
| general purpose computer.
|
| The software is too bad.
|
| It's not worth the problems and incompatibilities.
|
| Once you've spent days trying to get non Raspberry Pi devices to
| "just work" you'll see things in an entirely new light.
| epx wrote:
| And currently a NUC is cheaper than a Raspberry Pi.
| SaulJLH wrote:
| Dupe. Posted 4hrs before this post (1hr):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31639724
| pvg wrote:
| They're only HN dupes if there's been discussion on the
| submission.
| [deleted]
| squarefoot wrote:
| To those complaining about software instability, lack of support,
| etc. on anything that is not a Raspberry Pi, here are a few
| hints:
|
| 1. Before purchasing anything, make a list of your hardware needs
| then find a number of boards that could fulfill them. The (yearly
| updated) list at Linuxgizmos can help.
|
| https://linuxgizmos.com/catalog-of-136-open-spec-community-b...
|
| 2. It is advisable to ignore any software published by the board
| manufacturer. Unless you spend a lot on LTS hardware (guaranteed,
| not just labeled as such), many manufacturers will stop
| releasing/updating their own distro after some time. Just
| concentrate on the hardware.
|
| 3. Now that you have a list, head to armbian.com or dietpi.com
| and find if your board brand/model is supported. Chances are that
| it is since those two distributions support a really high number
| of devices. It might seem odd but it's not; we don't ask Asus or
| Supermicro to release an operating system for their mainboards,
| do we? So why we should expect that from SBC manufacturers when
| there is perfectly good 3rd party support around?
|
| https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported
|
| https://dietpi.com/#download
|
| 4. Find the board that is better supported and you're done. Read
| also the forums, lots of knowledgeable people over there! Also
| consider making a well deserved donation to the projects for the
| hard work involved.
|
| For documentation about Allwinner and Rockchip SoCs, some among
| the most used in low cost boards, refer also to the following
| pages.
|
| https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page
|
| https://www.rockchip.fr/
| mrweasel wrote:
| In my mind this share one of the great drawbacks of the Raspberry
| Pi 400: The storage solution is terrible and makes the whole
| thing pointless.
|
| It doesn't matter that much that the regular boards don't have
| storage beyond the SD card. It's fine for fun little project. If
| you attach a keyboard, then I honestly expect this thing to be
| able to function as an entry-level desktop. It might just be me,
| but both the Raspberry Pi 400 and this Orange Pi 800 needs an M.2
| slot. It doesn't need to support NVME, but at least add support
| for an M.2 SSD.
| rjsw wrote:
| Other RK3399 systems support NVME devices. Using an eMMC card
| in the Raspberry Pi 400 should have been easy to do.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| They do support NVMe, but only 4 lanes at PCIe 1.0 speeds.
| Seems like a waste to spend $$$ on storage that will only be
| partially used by a $$ board.
| meatmanek wrote:
| NVMe drives are surprisingly cheap these days - you can get
| a 128GB 2230 drive for $15 from several manufacturers.
| 256GB 2242 drives are around $30. If you have the space for
| a 2280 drive, you can get larger drives for under $100/TB.
|
| 128GB microSD cards are also around $15, but will likely
| have worse performance and durability than the SSD.
| maupin wrote:
| I could give the Pi 400 to my mother as an entry level desktop
| and she'd be completely fine. It's not like she needs 500GB of
| drive space.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Sure, but flash reliability is not great. SD cards can get
| hot or jostle, and eMMC can wear out and basically turn the
| board to ewaste (because replacement of the eMMC later in
| life of the device is difficult and often not worth it).
| Beyond that, speeds are much slower than pcie storage.
| avsteele wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Is the problem with using a sd card is that
| the transfer speed is too slow? How bad is it?
| n4bz0r wrote:
| If you are like me and can't be bothered with setting up a
| read-only FS for the system partition, in a year or two files
| on the card inevitably get corrupted to the point that the OS
| becomes unbootable. That's how frequently I swap/reflash SD
| card on my home RPi media-server. The speeds aren't great
| either.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| With the latest firmware, the RPi 4 can boot from an SSD over
| USB. Still not as nice and convenient as an M.2 drive would be,
| but it's much nicer than using an SD card.
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(page generated 2022-06-06 23:01 UTC)