Hi there,

I've been contacted by KoVu Inc. regarding their RK3328 "SwiftBoard", which should be a great candidate for NAS applications. Any thoughts?

 

https://www.board-db.org/news/2018/01/08/kovu-swiftboard-data-nas-single-board-computer-sata-hdmi-2-0-emmc-gbe-android-armbian-openmediavault/

 

P.S.: I should receive a sample of this board in the next weeks, if you're interested in further updates.

 

Cheers!

Probably some more information: https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/12/14/more-low-cost-arm-linux-nas-platforms-coming-soon-popcorn-hour-transformer-xl-odroid-hc2/#comment-550021 (and comments below)

 

BTW: I only now realized that there's no SD card slot on this board...

5 hours ago, tkaiser said:

BTW: I only now realized that there's no SD card slot on this board...

 

Well then the USB loader is the only option.  If they put a good U-boot that allows USB booting then it can be done that way, otherwise it's the crazy cable bootrom device mode.

 

 

You don't like eMMC? Why?

Storage:

8GB eMMC

 

37 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said:

Well then the USB loader is the only option.  If they put a good U-boot that allows USB booting then it can be done that way, otherwise it's the crazy cable bootrom device mode.

 A-A cable. When I first pluged it in in my rk3368 tv box and pine64 (where rktools were residing), I didn't know what to expect - I am not an electrical guy, but I knew this non-standard cable is a very bad idea. happily it didn't end up with frying anything or bang. but "crazy cable" is a really good fit name for this thing.

For installation. purposes, although an 8 GB eMMC will often be a slow one.

 

in BOOTROM mode that "A" is actually a slave, so it's alright.  I wouldn't use that cable for anything else though...

8 hours ago, tkaiser said:

BTW: I only now realized that there's no SD card slot on this board...

 

There should be SDIO on P5, but that needs a breakout board from the pin headers. Not sure why they didn't put an SD slot on the board though, space doesn't look like a good reason...

5 minutes ago, raffaele said:

space doesn't look like a good reason...

 

Cost and complexity, they probably didn't want to bother with it and they don't want to bury it I would guess (the I/O side of the board looks full)

 

 

So RK805 PMIC like Rock64 and IIRC Renegade

Looks like a SPI flash (25lq128), U-boot SPL might actually live there.

Asmedia ASM1351 sata bridge

Room for more RAMS

Hello 

 

I´m very new in the arm community and I have all ready from couple of days this board. I´m happy until now but my intention it´s to have with this board a Debian (plain - netinstall).

This board came with Ubuntu Mate and I don´t know how to boot from another image boot and to finish my setup. The board came also with cable (a-a) but I don´t have any clue how to use it.

 

Any help will be VERY appreciated.

 

Regards

I hadn't heard anything about this board since the last post on this thread, I would guess no one has one among the developers...  :-/

Too bad for me heard that. 

I´m trying hard to find a way to boot from usb or sd for change the so or to have a way to put back the original Ubuntu Mate in case of something going wrong. No luck yet.

For a board with no sd-card what it´s the usual way to boot? From usb, from sdio, etc?

 

Thx

The eMMC would be the typical boot device, however if you have a "blank" machine with no software, one of the USB ports is an OTG and will be able to respond to commands as a USB device (Rockchip has a loader for PC for this).  You have to flash stuff over that link in worst case.

 

Rockchip devices can boot from eMMC, SD, and SPI flash, typically.  The bootloader can then load a kernel/rootfs from whatever it happens to support (USB, network, etc)

It´s some keyboard combo for using the Rockchip boot sequence? Or to choose boot order in Rockchip logo screen?

6 minutes ago, mese said:

It´s some keyboard combo for using the Rockchip boot sequence? Or to choose boot order in Rockchip logo screen?

I see a button labeled "Recover" on the picture in the first post, so it is possible that this button can be used to boot into the maskrom (aka "load stuff from USB") mode.

There's a UART on one side (if all connectors look to you, it's the left). An UART-USB dongle will probably give you some information what happens during boot (and maybe you can interrupt the bootprocess) to deal with u-boot commands etc. 

If i long press the recover button a screen with Rockchip appear and stay  on screen. That it´s the maskrom isn´t did? But nothing it´s happened if put the usb stick inside. I´d tryed with ubuntu server for arm, debian minimal and X( lxce) for arm, dietpi for rock64 and no luck.

 

Tnx

I wouldn't recommend such a harakiri approach...  Be happy that it didn't did anything,  otherwise you might have to deal with a broken board...  Do you have an USB-UART to see if serial output is activated during boot?

Nope. I don´t have that USB-UART. What that should do or what can I do with that one?

 

Tnx

http://linux-sunxi.org/UART

 

Not related to Rockchip, but also true..

 

But cause you're not that experienced in this field, I would suggest that you wait until the boardmaker (or a trusted opensource project) delivers a proper upgrade procedure for this board. Whereas the small sunxi-boards have a well known fallback to SD-Card in case something is messed up, I've no clue about fallbacks for your device. Just to be clear, I can't help you in case you mess up your eMMC and others might be not willing to help. 

@Igor:

 

This is at the bottom of their product page:  http://www.kovu.io/

 

Tnx for all. I have a lot of it and software background including linux server and workstation. But now I´m in the position to learn about anything else pretty much diff. than my usually stuffs.

 

I wrote to developer to send me some doc´s related to boot process or how to build images and I should wait for some response (if it´s should be one).

 

@Tony

I saw that page... I´d studied a lot in my trying to find useful resources for me. But nothing else except those images (links, etc)

 

Regards

Well, I was pointing out that another page is talking about this project without (seemingly) anyone knowing about our supposed support for their thingy.

Maybe for booting purposes should use the hdd attached to sata? 

10 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said:

This is at the bottom of their product page:  http://www.kovu.io/

There will be more and more vendors using ARMBIAN as a reference because good support is one of the most important selling points. They will use "Armbian (will) support(s) ..." in their sales speeches even it's a complete fiction. Sales are not engineering

 

We can't do anything if they use that. A threshold for legal actions for abusing trademark is pretty high, it is a lot of work and it is not worth the troubles.

It's sad that they (and others) will just use this solo for their gain without asking and giving something in return.

22 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said:

This is at the bottom of their product page:  http://www.kovu.io/

Seems to be a new trend that boardmaker 'add Armbiansupport' before a dev even have this board on the table (just an other example: https://www.96rocks.com).. 

 

19 minutes ago, mese said:

Tnx for all. I have a lot of it and software background including linux server and workstation. But now I´m in the position to learn about anything else pretty much diff. than my usually stuffs.

It's not that I want to blame you.   But brick a board takes normally less efforts than unbrick it... And I don't want to be the guy who motivated you to brick a board..  

The sad part is, given the capabilities of the Rock64, this should be a good device, it is possible it would be interesting enough to support if we had reason.

Just now, TonyMac32 said:

The sad part is, given the capabilities of the Rock64, this should be a good device, it is possible it would be interesting enough to support if we had reason.

Agree. Technical wise this looks very nice, while the rest. Time will tell. We have spoken  Hauk!

6 minutes ago, Igor said:

It's sad that they (and others) will just use this solo for their gain without asking and giving something in return.

 

A 'hall of shame' page next to the starting page...  Those boardmakers claimed Armbiansupport but never got in contact with the maintainers... Those boards claim to have armbiansupport but there's currently no armbiansupport..

Maybe they claim the Armbian based on chip RK3328 that it´s already supported by Armbian throught Rock64.

My reason to start do learn about boards it´s the posibility to split one server from my home into some parts - I call that modularity.

I´l waiting for support from the developer. Until then, I´l do tests with yuno under the Ubuntu umbrella. I have some worries for the case/s if do something wrong and the system not able to boot from emmc. 

 

Regards