I would like more SBC options, rather than the solitary RPi right now. My sdcard shield popped off the RPi I have, and I had to resolder it back on. Two years ago, I would have just trashed it and bought another.
https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/
It has four lanes of PCI express so you can connect a big NVMe SSD or whatever. In my testing it seems to run OK on only passive cooling.
I agree that it would be a mistake to buy a wildcat board which needs a special patched Linux from the vendor. Mainline support, or no deal.
https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort
And also, have a look at SBC's supported by Armbian.
[1] https://homebrewserver.club/low-tech-website-howto.html#serv...
From the rest of the other boards it is just one kernel release (if you're lucky, 3 releases) and they have moved on to the latest SBC and dropped support and releases. The Raspberry Pi Foundation still continues to support older boards.
It just seems that with the many Raspberry Pi users, the documentation and the ecosystem built around it seems to be its success rather than the technical specs.
Incidentally, I’ve been trying to repurpose a Pi Zero W I blew out the USB bus on. A bunch of people in my local group expressed interest, but each I contacted in turn said “give it to the next guy”
If there was a RiscV chip that met a particular standard (x voltage range, y clock speed, same supporting circuitry and software), then we'd have multiple chip vendors creating the same part, and hopefully it would turn into a jelly bean chip.
Maybe there will be a gold standard of RISC-V SoC like there was the Intel 8086, and bunch of clones could show up. That was close to happening with ATmega32U, but ultimately the clones disappeared.
They report their suppliers have been delivering their parts orders on time and RPi is shipping the full volume of units they always intended for 2022. They are just getting bought up at a much higher rate than expected. They also say some of the issues in buying single units through online consumer retail channels is because RPi is prioritizing filling advance orders from volume integrators.
I have no idea the accuracy of what they're saying but fulfilling advance commitments from volume integrators first makes sense as those are long-term customers who are counting on the orders to ship their own products. Shorting those orders would be fairly disastrous as it flag RPi as an unreliable supplier reducing future design wins.