New ROCK 3 Model A co-developed by RADXA and Rockchip

[FRANK333]

https://shop.allnetchina.cn/blogs/news/the-new-rock-3-model-a-co-developed-by-radxa-and-rockchip

I wanted to use this beautiful board with virtual box and a quectel modem, to make a LTE router, can anyone tell me if armbian will be compatible?

[Werner]

18 hours ago, FRANK333 said:

if armbian will be compatible

Once we get hands on some hardware (and somebody is willing to spend time on) it probably will sooner or later. Basic support for newer RK chip has already been pushed to mainline Linux.

[Stuart Naylor]

As anyone got any idea what the muxed stata/usb3 ports are? Is this basically a wired adapter as not much is said but on the Rock 3 model B 1 sata is on board and guess the other 2 are whatever you do to mux the usb 3.0 ports.
Could be interesting for NAS as with a 5 port sata adapter then x8 native is quite unique for B.

Still the pcie 3 is down to 1 lane (B) so overall bandwidth is same as the rockpi4 2x ver 2.1 but guess the bottleneck is the 2x 1gbe bridged maybe.
Not sure if the A is the same just minus the 1st onboard and 2 lanes on the pcie.

[FRANK333]

@Stuart Naylor I like this board because it has an M2 port that accepts the quectel em160 modem, with armbian and the appropriate management software you can build a cheap and very fast modem with about 1Gb of bandwidth. Too bad it doesn't have a second ethernet port. I will definitely buy it if it has armbian compatibility it costs 35USD.

 

[Werner]

10 minutes ago, FRANK333 said:

Too bad it doesn't have a second ethernet port.

AFAIK they plan a 3B model with 2nd GBe.

[FRANK333]

@werner i was looking for but i haven't seen any so far, there is a device with only usb3 and 2 eth ports i saw but i would like to use direct M2.

[Werner]

https://forum.radxa.com/t/rock-3b-ideas-and-discussion/6810

[FRANK333]

wow

[Stuart Naylor]

I still sort of think Radxa are positioning this board incorrectly as for me its the router companion to the RK3566 which is a great edge board.
They seem to be positioning it as a series of multipurpose SBC's whilst ignoring its extremely strong selling points.
It could be an extremely low cost native 3x SATA board that the PCIe3 could populate another 1Gbe m.2 if you wished.
But as it is 3x sata could be perfect for a mini NAS on a single 1Gbe at extremely low cost.

The other amazing thing is that the RK3568 has a 5Gbe MAC that would need a 5Gbe PHY chip to be added and then a M.2 sata on PCIe3x2
That at the cost would be amazing and passes a hurdle that many current SBC NAS are totally bottlenecked by ethernet bandwidth.

The other thing that looks really good on paper is the G52 but in reality its a cut down MP1 that is quite different from standard the the MESA crew gave it a naming of G52L 'little'

I have been looking and the Radxa Zero... really cool, that they might also do a S922x board could be cool also and the RockPi5 RK3588 a lot of cool.
But when I look at the format, cost and offerings with the Rock3 range I am sort of confused as what I see that could be of huge value has been overlooked and layouts provide just another series of general purpose SBC where they don't really excel or have a unique selling point of anything... ?

Each to their own but prob not likely to be interested in one.
 

[DMC]

Any chances for Raspbian build for RK3568 Rock 3A soon? It should be very similar to already supported Firefly P2 (same chip)

In fact image for v4.19 kernel works with some errors, v5 is not booting at all 

 

[Igor]

42 minutes ago, DMC said:

Raspbian build for RK3568 Rock 3A soon? It should be very similar to already supported Firefly P2 (same chip)

 

Our work has nothing to do with Raspbian. Raspbian is (was - now this is RPi OS) simple Debian with low level support for Raspberry Pi.
https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/

 

42 minutes ago, DMC said:

In fact image for v4.19 kernel works with some errors, v5 is not booting at all 

 

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/#why-does-hardware-feature-xy-work-in-old-kernel-but-not-in-more-recent-one

Can easily cost 100.000 EUR (for the first year) to move functions from vendor private kernel to mainline and some % of previous number per each year keeping them functional. Vendor in question never donated a single cent toward our work, your donations doesn't cover the costs of basic infrastructure maintenance, ...

 

Pick something from those:
https://github.com/armbian/build#sponsors

 

42 minutes ago, DMC said:

Any chances

Chances exists - step up and help raising money that is required for R&D and support activities. Much more productive then asking us to work for your and vendor interest on our expense.

[DMC]

Sorry Igor, I meant Armbian, but wrote Raspbian  You are completely right about that. 

I'm not vendor and don't expect anything to do on my interest, just was curious about 5.x kernel for rk3568 which is quite new and probably more devices with it are coming soon.

You are right about old kernels and manufacturer support quality but this is rather more about rockchip than radxa. This CPU is new and I hope more manufacturers will use that and system on v4 or v5 kernel will be much better. I got one that board because of its specs and just looking what is now available