tkaiser

You might better try to educate yourself about what really happened. Bananas and Oranges are Cubieboard descendants which itself is in a line with Mele A1000 (or more in general: Allwinner A10/A20 based Android devices that were popular in China and were exported later by Tom Cubie which kickstarted more or less linux-sunxi community, Cubietech and sites like CNX). These origins on A10/A20 happened in 2012 when RPi software support was still very limited. Below one rackmounted Mele A2000 cluster (real Ethernet and real SATA combined with SSDs made the difference to toys):
 


 
Even the power plug used on Bananas and Oranges is inherited from those first Mele TV boxes!
 
At the time RPi was in early development Beagleboard was already there, ODROIDs were already there and in China they had something similar to RPi already years before (QQ2440 and Mini2440 are FriendlyARM products, yes the company now selling NanoPis since Westerners are that stupid that they only can accept a good SBC design if it has Pi in its name)
 
When speaking about RPi it's more or less about Western perception and of course marketing (that's where the RPi Foundation really excels)

You might better try to educate yourself about what really happened. Bananas and Oranges are Cubieboard descendants which itself is in a line with Mele A1000 (or more in general: Allwinner A10/A20 based Android devices that were popular in China and were exported later by Tom Cubie which kickstarted more or less linux-sunxi community, Cubietech and sites like CNX). These origins on A10/A20 happened in 2012 when RPi software support was still very limited. Below one rackmounted Mele A2000 cluster (real Ethernet and real SATA combined with SSDs made the difference to toys):
 


 
Even the power plug used on Bananas and Oranges is inherited from those first Mele TV boxes!
 
At the time RPi was in early development Beagleboard was already there, ODROIDs were already there and in China they had something similar to RPi already years before (QQ2440 and Mini2440 are FriendlyARM products, yes the company now selling NanoPis since Westerners are that stupid that they only can accept a good SBC design if it has Pi in its name)
 
When speaking about RPi it's more or less about Western perception and of course marketing (that's where the RPi Foundation really excels)

HC2 is now officially available: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G151505170472 (see especially mechanical incompatibility note for few 3.5" HDD at the bottom)

HC2 is now officially available: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G151505170472 (see especially mechanical incompatibility note for few 3.5" HDD at the bottom)

23% 'one star rating' at least for me is a very clear 'never ever buy such crap' indicator. 2nd 1 star review names the problem already:
 
As very often with cheap PSUs you can not trust in what's printed on them. 5V/4A would mean 20W if you multiply both numbers. But crappy PSUs either provide 5V (no load) or 4A but not both at the same time (voltage drop under load). And the same phenomenon can be observed with cables between PSU and board if wires are too tiny. Incoming voltage at the board dropping due to cable/contact resistance too high. And this happens only with some load generated (Ohm's law).
 
Can a moderator now please move this whole thread to the subforum where it belongs too? Thanks!

23% 'one star rating' at least for me is a very clear 'never ever buy such crap' indicator. 2nd 1 star review names the problem already:
 
As very often with cheap PSUs you can not trust in what's printed on them. 5V/4A would mean 20W if you multiply both numbers. But crappy PSUs either provide 5V (no load) or 4A but not both at the same time (voltage drop under load). And the same phenomenon can be observed with cables between PSU and board if wires are too tiny. Incoming voltage at the board dropping due to cable/contact resistance too high. And this happens only with some load generated (Ohm's law).
 
Can a moderator now please move this whole thread to the subforum where it belongs too? Thanks!

There's a new JMS578 beta firmware available ready for test (don't forget to backup your currently running firmware -- see above). This should fix the issue of cutting power hard to connected disks, for details (and firmware link) see here please: https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=29069

A new wrinkle to this idea. I've been working with Arduinos lately and thought it would be useful to extend the ArmbianIO concept to use them as "slave" interfaces for sensors/displays/etc. This is an experiment I'm working on and would like some feedback. The idea is that the ArmbianIO API can be used identically on Windows/Mac/Linux. On a remote setup, an Arduino will be used as an I/O slave listening for commands over the serial port. The ArmbianIO you compile on your PC will translate the I2C/SPI/GPIO functions into strings of commands/data over the serial port. Below is a video of my https://github.com/bitbank2/oled_example project running on my Mac and the same exact C code running on my Orange Pi Lite board next to it:
 
 
Please let me know your thoughts.

There's a new JMS578 beta firmware available ready for test (don't forget to backup your currently running firmware -- see above). This should fix the issue of cutting power hard to connected disks, for details (and firmware link) see here please: https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=29069

To quote the most important sentence there (emphasis by me):
 
So how is Armbian affected?
Allwinner A10 boards (Cortex-A8): easy solution, stop supporting them, it's only one board left AFAIK Micro-USB powered support nightmares called MiQi and Tinkerboard (Cortex-A17): in my personal opinion support for power hungry boards with Micro-USB for DC-IN should be phased out. Once this is done problem solved ODROID-XU4 (Cortex-A15): stop supporting legacy kernel and switch next from 4.9 to 4.14 (in the hope of an upstream fix arriving soon) That's it.
 
BTW: it's frustrating how much attention Meltdown and Spectre get compared to more severe security issues  
 
Edit: I forgot i.MX6 (Cortex-A9). Given how 'popular' these boards are these days the most easy 'solution' would also be to phase support out.

Update on HC2: Mass production will start in approx. 2 weeks. HC2 will be fully software compatible (same SoC, SATA bridge and even same schematics design except 12V power rails for a 3.5" HDD added on HC2). The hardware changes should be obvious: 12V DC-IN and much larger enclosure/heatsink to fit the size of 3.5" HDDs.

Which image? Did you realize that Armbian currently neither supports Core nor Core2?
 
If you use an image with eMMC support (eg. those for NEO Air) it should just work, if you use any image without eMMC support (eg. those for NanoPi NEO) it can't work.

If you look at page 1 of this thread there are thermal values from my 1st HC1. When my HC2 arrived some weeks ago I noticed a lot higher temperatures reported in the beginning. I carefully 'massaged' the PCB and this did the trick: temperatures later only a few degrees above HC1 (which is to be expected due to the additional 12V/5V DC-DC converter). So trying to get a better contact between SoC and heatsink (spreading the thermal paste) is always a good idea if the temperatures you get are a bit off.
 
https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?t=27665

Useless unless you want to 'restore performance' or perform the equivalent of TRIM on an SD card (if the card supports it).
 
It gets pretty boring to repeat everything again and again since it's written in Armbian's documentation: https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/#how-to-check-download-authenticity
 
TL;DR: Check download authenticity/integrity, check your card with  F3 or H2testw, burn with Etcher. Everything else is a waste of time.

Just look at Orange Pi Zero Plus 2: same PCB, one batch with H3 in the reel, the other batch H5. Due to software incompatibility use cases and usability of the two variants differ a lot (and I personally have not the slightest idea why 'we' started here to support the H5 variant at all since IMO no reasonable use case exists -- H3 variant with legacy kernel + Mali and video acceleration is something different)
 
So here we're talking about the same: identical PCB, identical design flaw (SinoVoip 'forgot' voltage regulation) but different SoCs, different DRAM and AP6212 on early Bananas vs. AP6212A here, right?

I wrote it specifically for Armbian, but it doesn't hurt to support RPI boards. This way I can test my code across a wider range of boards. I have a desk full of ARM SBCs from various vendors (including RPF). I tend to write code to support the hardware I own.

And guess what: I have a huge box here labeled 'PC-Schraddel' (PC junk), just checked it for those cables and to my surprise I found in there my EspressoBin and also the right cable with 2 female Molex jacks:

And guess what: I have a huge box here labeled 'PC-Schraddel' (PC junk), just checked it for those cables and to my surprise I found in there my EspressoBin and also the right cable with 2 female Molex jacks:

Looks like it can be easily solved by cutting a cable with 2 female Molex connectors from an old ATX power supply and then using a pretty common Molex male to SATA power cables or adapters.
You may also find a cable with both female Molex and SATA power on it, but AFAIK modern ATX power supplies usually have separate cables for Molex and SATA power, especially since "full" SATA power has additional 3.3V line not present on 4pin Molex connectors.
 
You can call it "wrong" but I did a quick search and I couldn't find a Molex female connector (of this type) for soldering on PCB. Of course you could use any other connector there or solder a piece of cable to the PCB with a Molex female connector on the other end, but I'm not sure if those are better options than the current one.

Nice. How did you solve the problem of the stupid Molex male power connector? And do you sell these things?

We have produced a few minimalistic housings for the EspressoBin (120x42x81mm) with space for a 2.5" drive using a CNC molding cutter.
Passive cooling of the processor and topaz switch by thermal coupling to the housing works well (housing temperature 31 degrees, ambient temperature 20 degrees).




 
 

Nah, but let's try another 'joke'. Can you imagine how the lower PCB side of the new small Xunlong H6 boards might look like if checking the size of a mPCIe Marvell SATA controller and OPi One/Lite:

 
(disclaimer: I've really no idea what Xunlong is planning, just a thought since H6 has PCIe so why not trying to expose the interface? Maybe just routing/preparing the 52 pins and not soldering the connector by default?)

Walls are spoiled, except the last one (i'll spoil it after completion).

Why spreading so much confusion? Both boards have own wiki pages provided by technical writers so there's no need to focus on temporary mistakes their marketing folks might make.
 
Main difference between both boards is that Core2 features an RTL8211 GbE PHY while Core uses the SoC's internal Fast Ethernet PHY. And I hope they stay with H3 (or H2+ since essentially the same) on Core and H5 on Core2 and do not start with stupid SoC exchanges since this only leads to confusion and users picking up the wrong OS images.
 
Peripherals (heatsink included) are all compatible and they designed the boards fortunately backwards compatible. Pin headers soldered or not can be decided in the store at checkout time (I assume the Core when ordered together with the Mini Shield comes with them presoldered, I can't imagine FE repeating the same mistake as with the first NAS expansion bay).
 
Size of DRAM is choosable and eMMC optional. Which combinations might be available might change over time (based on feedback/demand)
 
There's USB OTG on the Micro USB port (other boards do it differently eg Tritium and NEO Plus 2 so it's worth to mention since both boards even without pin headers soldered can provide limited network connectivity through g_ether module) and the boards can be powered through pin headers too. Ethernet implementation is interesting since they offer the same Mini Shield for both variants so it should be possible to combine the Core2 with an external GbE MagJack as long as traces are short and most probably of same length ( didn't look into schematic yet).
 
Software support efforts seem to be minimal (more or less only DT stuff and maybe checking for GbE TX/RX delay adjustments) and at least with the Core I wouldn't consider Micro USB for DC-IN a show stopper...

By setting the speed with ethtool: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/packages/bsp/h3consumption#L56 (h3consumption is essentially doing just that: adding a line with an ethtool call to /etc/rc.local).
 
Besides that you really don't want to use any nightly build for something productive (recently Ethernet stopped to work on H5 boards with latest nightly kernel) and there's a nice OMV image available for the board you're interested in which is the best idea if you want to start with OMV anyway...