Pine64 2GB DDR3 SDRAM, 10/100/1000 MB Ethernet port unpacking and quick review

Even though in my mid May post I said I will not go into future endeavors with low cost devices this one I have ordered long time ago (April 2016) and it was delayed with shipping.

Pine64 looked interesting and promising since they raised $1.7M on Kickstarter offered 3 different variants for affordable price.

Allwinner is awful with their open source support so you will not be using this device for your next media center since Kodi will not work, but since it has 2GB RAM and 1Gb Ethernet it seems perfect fit for a small home server. Continue reading “Pine64 2GB DDR3 SDRAM, 10/100/1000 MB Ethernet port unpacking and quick review”

OrangePi poor replacement for the real Raspberry Pi

I was intrigued with low price of Orange Pi PC on GearBest site and since I had a lot of unused points I decided to order one even though I did not really need it. For a few bucks you get quad core CPU, 1GB of RAM, Ethernet all the bells and whistles as Raspberry Pi for third of the price.

What could go wrong? Well it seems for this price you get what you paid for a third of quality manufacturing. As soon as I opened my box I noticed that the board is slightly bent as you can see on the picture here: Continue reading “OrangePi poor replacement for the real Raspberry Pi”

Good USB 2 Ethernet adapter that works with android/linux usb dongles like gk802, mk802

For almost a year now I am proud owner of gk802 iMX.6 quad stick. Ever since I bought the device, I immediately installed linux and used it as 24/7 powered personal server.

Device itself is great with quad core chip and 1GB of RAM, but limited only to WiFi connectivity provided by RTL8152 chip which is not fast or stable enough to be used for my purposes. Continue reading “Good USB 2 Ethernet adapter that works with android/linux usb dongles like gk802, mk802”