zlacker

The soldering iron pine64 made is also great. They released a upgraded version a few weeks ago. They also announced a RISC-V SBC, and its great to see them at least continuing to improve the SBC situation.

>>preiss+(OP)
The devices they make that don't ship with Linux on them are pretty good, those are also easier to get fully functional software since the scope is so much smaller.

The whole linux side is just a bit of a mess

>>preiss+(OP)
Oh yeah. I never thought I'd have the warm fuzzies for a USB PSU until the PinePower.

>>Martij+D
Do you think RISC-V will make any difference for the Pine64 situation (especially the SPI flash)? I remember seeing something about a UEFI standard. Would that help?

>>3np+w1
wow... I hadn't seen that before but the PinePower looks absolutely incredible

>>freedo+Sh
Having one, I don't feel as good about the PinePower. I bought it together with their Pinecil soldering iron (which is great!) as it seemed like the ideal way to provide power to it, but unfortunately it's a very unreliable combo, with the iron rebooting frequently. Discussion around many similar issue reports online suggests the possibility of bad implementations of USB PD. Perhaps this is more a criticism of the complexities inherent in USB power supply in general, though.

Running the Pinecil off a Riden bench PSU with a simple DC power plug is rock solid, for comparison.

>>freedo+9h
There are standards for ARM bootloaders to have UEFI compat. Pine64 just needs to care.

>>freedo+9h
RISC-V works exactly the same as ARM from the perspective of pine64 and distribution and it will not solve anything

>>sho_hn+rq
Which PinePower model are you using? In my experience, the Pinecil works flawlessly with the 65W PinePower and the recommended heat-resistant red silicone USB-C cable.

>>common+zT
It's the "PinePower – 120W Desktop Power Supply – EU version" and I'm using that same recommended red cable on the PD65W port on the right side of the front plate.

Here's a similar report by someone else: https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/qq7wv8/pine...

I've seen a few others.

Given the complexities of USB PD, it could also be on the side of the iron and then down to the version of IronOS. The other reporter mentions it works fine with other chargers, but that doesn't speak to correctness/compliance. I did not investigate much since my bench PSU is right below the PinePower on my workbench :)

I will say it generally works nicely with the little USB-C-equipped power delivery breakout boards I use in projects, or MCU boards I've tried. I also park my phone on it a lot. So I am getting use out of it.

>>freedo+9h
The currently shipping affordable RISC-V SBCs tend to be RISC-V cores embedded with a bunch of frustrating undocumented peripherals, more or less the same as with affordable ARM SBCs. It's disappointing :(

See for instance the Allwinner D1 chip.