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Freshman Page [A.K.A. Quick Start Guide]


Needed:

  • Pine A64 or A64+ board
  • Power Supply (PSU and micro USB cable), make sure spec at +5V @2A
  • MicroSD card, 8GB and above, speed at least class 10. Per tkaiser input, high random I/O performance is an important factor when selecting microSD card.
  • HDMI cable except for headless build
  • Input device(s) - (keyboard, mouse, remote, pointer, etc)

Steps:

  1. Firstly, be careful handling the Pine A64 board to make sure it is not subjected to electrostatic discharge. Wearing and correctly utilizing a grounding strap can help to mitigate the risks of ESD. At any rate, handle the board at the edges, avoid touching components on the board, and place on a safe surface (avoid carpets and any other material that is prone electrostatic build-up).
  2. Then you'll need a reliable 5 volt, 2 amp (or higher) power supply. This is very important. If the amperage rating of the power supply is too low, the board will not boot properly. A marginally higher voltage for the PSU is ok (such as 5.1 volts - due to the nature of the micro usb connection, a 5.1v supply can help protect slightly against voltage drops which can cause undesirable function), but a significantly higher voltage more than 7 volt will damage the Pine A64 board and may render it inoperative.
  3. If using a power supply with a separate micro USB cable, make sure to use a cable with low resistance. Cables with high resistance will cause improper function and the unit may have trouble booting up. The thicker the internal cabling, the better (i.e. AWG (American Wire Gauge) 20 is better than AWG 28). In General, the power-only micro USB cable comes with red color USB header.
  4. You will also need a decent microSD card. There are many sub-standard and fake microSD cards in circulation, and using just such a card will cause issues booting up. There are ways of testing microSD cards prior to installing the operating system to make sure they are ok for use. The main one is H2testw 1.4 or another alternative is F3.
  5. Next, you'll want a decent HDMI cable. As with micro USB cabling, quality of HDMI cable can vary a lot, so try and go for quality rather than cheapness. If you are using a HDMI to VGA/DVI adapter, be aware that some work better than others.
  6. Finally, you will want to have a way of controlling the on-screen cursor and of typing, thus you will need a keyboard, mouse, touchpad/trackpad, or some kind of combo device that combines these two things.
  7. After you have all the physical things you need, you will need to download and install the operating system to microSD card. Using Win32 Disk Imager in Windows, or via the dd command in Unix-based systems to burn the microSD card.
  8. The onboard LED light just indicate power on status, LED will not blink during boot up or encounter error.

Recommended OS build DD image for Freshman

  • Using 8GB class 10 microSD card

File:8GB microSD.jpg

  • Setup Steps:
  1. Download the preferred OS image from below OS links and extract the img file from the archive using 7-Zip
  2. Use Win32 Disk Imager or Linux dd command to write the img to a SD card
  3. Insert the SD card into Pine A64 board and boot it up

Debian Linux Jessie with Mate GUI Image [20160508] by lenny.raposo with Longsleep kernel

File:Logo debian.jpg

  • DD image (for 8GB and above SD Card):
  • Up to date on longsleep uboot, kernel and fixes
  • Suitable for 512MB/1GB/2GB PineA64 Board
  • Login with
    • username: debian
    • password: debian
  • Execute resize_rootfs.sh script to resize the root partition in order to fully utilize the SD Card

Ubuntu Linux Image [20160502] based on Longsleep build, updated by Pine64

File:Logo ubuntu.jpg

  • Thanks to longsleep works, the Linux build progress rapidly, This is an OLD build based on longsleep and may not have all bell and whistles from longsleep and Sunxi community. For latest build, you can create one and following this thread
  • Suitable for 1GB/2GB Pine A64+ Board, not suitable for 512MB Pine A64 Board due to system memory constrain
  • Included XFCE Desktop, Midori Browser, Thunder Email, LibreOffice Suite, and Gnome MPlayer
  • Login with
    • username: ubuntu
    • password: ubuntu

Android 5.1.1 Image Release 20160505

File:Logo android lollipop.jpg

  • The Android build suitable for 1GB/2GB Pine A64+ Board, not advise to run on 512MB Pine A64 Board due to system memory constrain
  • Rootable build, online update (OTA) only work when the build still not root.
  • new MAC address assignment method, tags to board and SoC unique ID.
  • The Bluetooth functions now work which broken on previous build.
  • HDMI output can set to either 720P or 1080P. The boot up logo screen still display on 1080P and will change to 720P on next build
  • Supports video screen scaling function
  • Implement new UVC USB camera driver
  • DD image (for 8GB microSD Card):
  • Rooted DD image (for 8GB microSD Card):

Remix OS 2.0 Image Release 20160415 [BETA]

Logo remix.jpg

  • Suitable for 2GB Pine A64+ Board, can runs on 1GB Pine A64+ Board with performance lagging, not suitable for 512MB Pine A64 Board

SoC Specification

  • Based on Allwinner A64

Allwinner A64.jpg

CPU Architecture

  • Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 Processor@1152Mhz
  • A power-efficient ARM v8 architecture
  • 64 and 32bit execution states for scalable high performance
  • Support NEON Advanced SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) instruction for acceleration of media and signal processing function
  • Support Large Physical Address Extensions(LPAE)
  • VFPv4 Floating Point Unit
  • 32KB L1 Instruction cache and 32KB L1 Data cache
  • 512KB L2 cache

GPU Architecture

System Memory

  • Main Memory Option: 512KB, 1GB and 2GB.
  • Storage Memory: No build in Flash memory, fully base on bootable microSD Card or USB attached storage.

Board Features

Video

  • HDMI 1.4a (Type A - full)

Audio

  • 3.5mm stereo earphone/microphone plug

Network

  • 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet(Pine A64+ version), 10/100Mbps Ethernet(Pine A64 version)
  • WiFi 802.11 b/g/n with Bluetooth 4.0 (optional)

Storage

  • mricoSD - bootable, support SDHC and SDXC, storage up to 256GB
  • USB - 2 USB2.0 Host port

Expansion Ports

  • DSI - Display Serial Interface, 4 lanes MiPi, up to 1080P
  • CSI - CMOS Camera Interface up to 5 mega pixel
  • TP - Touch Panel Port, SPI with interrupt
  • RTC - Real Time Clock Battery Connector
  • VBAT - Lithium Battery Connector with temperature sensor input
  • Wifi/BT Module Header - SDIO 3.0 and UART
  • 2x20 pins "Pi2" GPIO Header
  • 2x17 pins "Euler" GPIO Header
  • 2x5 pins "EXP" Console Header

Power Usage

  • Input Power: DC 5V @ 2A, 3.7V Li-Ion battery connector, microUSB connector, Euler connector
  • Power Consumption: 2.5W

Software/Image Download

Board Dimension

  • 133mm x 80mm x 19mm

Pine A64 Hardware PCB information

Datasheet

Pine A64 POT

Related Information

Other Resources in the Net

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