Note that if you enable USB3, it disables PCIe. That's a hardware limitation of the a5e, I'm told...

Board that would fit though, the H4 PLUS from hardkernel, limited to 4 sata instead of 5. 120x120, but only 2 screws would fit I believe...

Update, this is also working .... extraargs=reboot=watchdog UPDATE: It stopped working after 3 successful reboots...

Ok update.. I used a USB Ethernet to update and now the local phy is showing as end0 and it works. I'm kind of doubting my story now. I know the initial login could not connect to the Ethernet. After I installed on the local emmc and upgraded via apt upgrade things work now. I think this is a non-issue.

The thing is that I need it on different boards .... Tried Armbian Trixie and Ubuntu based, same issue thus it might be uoot and/or kernel related. Thanks for your help though.