December 31, 2021
Orange Pi 4 (Rockchip 3399) other bare metal projects
It turns out that I have been working with various ARM based
single board computers (SBC) since around 2016.
As I move from one board to another, I typically use a
previous project as a starting point, modifying it according
to the specific hardware details of the current board.
As I began working with the Rockchip 3399 on the Orange Pi 4,
I found myself unsure of which of my previous projects would
provide the best starting point, hence this little review.
- BBB (beaglebone black) 32 bit, March 2016
- Allwinner H3 32 bit, Orange Pi PC, December 2016
- Samsung s5p6818, 64 bit, NanoPi Fire 3, August 2018
- Allwinner H5 64 bit, Orange Pi PC 2, November 2018
- Xilinx XC7C010, 32 bit, EBAZ4205 bitcoin board, January 2021
- Rockchip 3399, 64 bit, Orange Pi 4, December 2021
The Allwinner H5 project has not worked out well. It stalled with
unsolved difficulties getting interrupts to work (probably related
to power and clock initialization).
Also with the H5 I had to spend an inordinate amount of time
fiddling with U-Boot because the U-Boot that came with the various
linux distributions was built without networking features.
I also made the unfortunate decision to keep both my H3 and my H5
work in the same repository.
This is something I ought to fix if and when I return to working
on the H5 again.
It would seem that my first 64 bit ARM project was the Fire3,
which had a number of complications. After having some success
with the Fire3 I did some work with the Allwinner h5 on the "pc 2".
It looks like the best bet for a starting point for these
Rockchip demos would be my most recent work on the EBAZ4025
(Xilinx XC7C010).
Have any comments? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's electronics pages / tom@mmto.org