After a day of playing, I am running full featured Armbian, Debian Wheezy, built with Armbian script from sources. We had to fix few things in U-boot and upgraded kernel to .82 but generally it was easy to boot the board. Of course SolidRun also provide some basic images.
Three(3) phys, USB and PCI is detected in kernel 3.10.82 - I don't have much hardware to plug in so I can't do much tests at this point. There is no CPU governor (yet?), so I assume it's running full speed (1.6Ghz) all the time. There are dip switches on the board to set cpu / dram speed ...
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Welcome to ARMBIAN (Debian wheezy 3.10.94-marvell)
Last login: Sat Jan 9 10:11:28 2016 from desktop
Load: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05 - Board: 64.6°C - Memory: 973Mb
root@armada:~#
Waiting for:
I decided to drop idea to put an AC card into the board since it's simply too problematic and expensive (66USD). This card doesn't have support in legacy kernel, in 4.4 have no idea if everything else already works + I have only one AC device in the lab. The Wireless card I choose is not fresh new but it's cheap (14USD) and reported working on Linux: Atheros AR5BXB112 AR9380 450Mbps. If I get stability and around real 300Mbps is good enough.
M2 drive. I'll put one 128G INSSD128GM.26M2242 TRANSCEND MTS400 128GB SSD SATA3 M.2 2242 TS128GMTS400 which should be big enough for most cases.
Mpci2sata for one ordinary SATA.
SFP module. Haven't found the proper one yet.
With Armbian tools it's possible to build (I collect and fix all patches) and should be possible to boot kernel 4.3.3 and 4.4 - next.
Edit #1: Board boots with 4.3.3 / Eth: no, USB: yes, mPci: yes
Edit #2: Jessie image download
Edit #3: Legacy kernel upgraded to 3.10.94
Edit #4: Network performance
Edit #5: If eth0 connected to gigabit, + cca. 2°C more heat on CPU in idle
Edit #6: mSATA is working with patched U-boot
Edit #7: mSATA and mPCI can be enabled in any combination. Tested one wireless card ...
Edit #8: boot time when installed to low performance 32Gb mSATA, power -> Login prompt <= 10s, (-3s waiting at u-boot) = cca. 7sec
Edit #9: I2C working out of the box. Tested with display, communication is slow. Perhaps only the settings
Edit #10: USB somehow buggy on current legacy kernel. I was trying to use Temper to collect temperature ... it worked once, next reading hang the device and I need to unplug / plug. Haven't debug. USB flash memory working normal.
Edit #11: Added cpu freq scalling 800/1600Mhz -> less heat in idle
Edit #12: Kernel 4.3.3 & 4.4 / Eth: yes, USB: yes, mPci: yes, mSata: yes ... and doing preliminary testing with Atheros AR9380 N wireless card // Kernel not ready yet
Edit:#13: Added mSATA to SATA card, patch a driver to unlock cheap - (consumer grade!, 13 USD shipped) AR9380 AR5BXB112 wireless card to operate at 5Ghz. Running STABLE
Edit:#14: Booting from m2 120G SATA drive
Edit:#15: Measuring temperature on the edge of heatsink = 39-42 while ambient is around 20.
Edit:#16: Added external 2.5 inch mechanical SATA drive powered from Clearfog +5V from header
