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Freshman Page [A.K.A. Quick Start Guide]
- @courtesy of tkaiser and ghost
- Helpful thread on Pine64 form:
Needed:
- Pine A64 or A64+ board
- Power Supply (PSU and micro USB cable), make sure spec at +5V @2A
- MicroSD card, 4GB and above, speed at least class 6. Please note that there are a lot of fake microSD card in market. If the price too good to be true considers fake.
- 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. Another 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 6 or 10 microSD card
Debian Linux with Mate GUI 20160422 by lenny.raposo with Longsleep kernel
- Suitable for 512MB/1GB/2GB PineA64 Board
- Direct download from pine64.org
- Torrent download
- MD5 (Zip file): a3d7b36af0a1278332eb29d36a168e48
- File Size: 1.1GB
- Login with
- username: pine64user
- password: password
Ubuntu Linux Image base on Longsleep 20160421 image, Pine64
- Suitable for 1GB/2GB Pine A64+ Board, not suitable for 512MB Pine A64 Board due to system memory constrain
- Direct download from pine64.org
- Torrent Download
- MD5 (Zip file) : 1cd06bdcbc1ceaf80b81c46638045ff7
- File Size: 1.8GB
- Base on longsleep xubuntu-xenial 20160415
- Added xubuntu-desktop GUI
- Login with
- username: ubuntu
- password: ubuntu
Android 5.1.1 Image Release 20160303
- Suitable for 1GB/2GB Pine A64+ Board, not suitable for 512MB Pine A64 Board due to system memory constrain
- Direct download from pine64.org
- Torrent download
- MD5 (Zip file): 2abdf3578a50e2df2c3e33b8e61c80c9
- File Size: 1.1GB
Remix OS 2.0 Image Release 20160415 Beta
- Suitable for 2GB Pine A64+ Board, can runs on 1GB Pine A64+ Board with performance lagging, not suitable for 512MB Pine A64 Board
- Direct download from pine64.org
- Torrent download
- MD5 (Zip file): efeb178d28593d4d928f70c8506953a4
- File Size: 1.2GB
SoC Specification
- Based on Allwinner A64
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
- ARM Mali400MP2 Dual-core GPU
- Support OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.1 standard
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
- Pine A64 Connector Layout @courtesy of norm24
- Pine A64 Heat Sink Location @courtesy of norm24
- Pine A64 Connector List
- Pine A64 Pi-2/Eular/Ext Bus/Wifi Bus Connector Pin Assignment (Updated 15/Feb/2016)
- Pine A64 Rev B PCB dimension
- Board Model Specification
- Pine A64+ 1GB Board Schematic
Datasheet
- Allwinner A64 SoC Brief Introduction
- Allwinner A64 SoC DataSheet
- Allwinner A64 SoC User Manual V1.0
- Realtek RTL8723BS WiFi with BT SDIO
- AXP803 PMIC
- HiMax 5MP CMOS Image Sensor SoC
- Bonsen Kexin V118-A64-GC2145-HM5065 CMOS Image Sensor SoC
- Feiyang FY07024DI26A30-D 7.0" TFT-LCD Panel
- Realtek 10/100/1000M Ethernet Transceiver
- Realtek 10/100M Ethernet Transceiver
Pine A64 POT
Related Information
Other Resources in the Net
- Linux Sunxi Wiki page on Pine A64
- Collection of scripts to set up a minimal Ubuntu 14.04.3 / Debian 8 Jessie root filesystem Contributed By Uli Middelberg
- Linux Image created by Andre Przywara
- Pine A64 with HypriotOS by Dieter and Govinda
- H2testw 1.4 – Gold Standard In Detecting USB Counterfeit Drives
- F3 - an alternative to h2testw
- Benchmarking The Low-Cost PINE 64+ ARM Single Board Computer by Michael Larabel
- Pine64 Linux build scripts, tools and instructions by Longsleep
- Pine64 Linux image by Longsleep
- A series of Youtube video on PineA64 Developers Board by Michael Larson
- Pine64 Quick Start Guide (with Gotchas)
- Shrinking images on Linux by FrozenCow