January 10, 2022

Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS (RK3328) - more about LTS

What is this LTS business all about?

The LTS boards I ordered have the YT8531C ethernet chip instead of the 8211E. I hope I won't regret this. They say this is just a lower cost replacement of the ethernet PHY.

The rub is that there is no datasheet publicly available and it is not software compatible with the 8211E. Yes, I should have done more homework and purchased the non-LTS version. I may sweat this when and if I get to writing an ethernet driver.

Some further investigation. The YT chip just seems to replace the 8211 as the PHY for the ethernet built into the RK3328. The second ethernet interface is via a USB to ethernet (in the raspberry pi style) chip, namely a RTL8153B, that is if I understand it correctly. Odd it is that the YT number is the same as the RTL number, so maybe I don't understand. I'll probably never use the second interface on the USB. It would have been great if that was the YT chip.
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's electronics pages / tom@mmto.org