Rock64


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Rock64

Rock64

Pine64's Rock64 is a powerful single board computer. It uses the Rockchip RK3328 Quad Core ARM64 processor. FreedomBox images are built and tested for this device.

Important: Read general advice about hardware before building a FreedomBox with this single board computer.

Download

Before downloading and using FreedomBox you need to ensure that latest u-boot based firmware is installed into the SPI flash chip. Download the latest u-boot to write to SPI flash and then see instructions on how to write u-boot firmware into SPI flash. The gist is that you download and write an image to an SD card. Boot with SD card and wait for white LED to blink continuously. After that power off remove SD card and proceed with FreedomBox download.

FreedomBox images meant for all "arm64" hardware work well for this device. However, u-boot firmware must present in SPI flash (or on a separate SD card, which is not explained here). Follow the instructions on the download page to create a FreedomBox SD card and boot the device. These images also work well for eMMC disk which an optional attachment to this board and disk drives in USB 2.0 ports (but not in the USB 3.0 port). The process for preparing them is same as for an SD card.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on the device and then install FreedomBox on it.

Availability

  • Price: 25 USD (1GB)

  • Price: 35 USD (2GB)

  • Price: 45 USD (4GB)

  • Pine64 Store

Hardware

  • Open Source Hardware (OSHW): No

  • CPU: Rockchip RK3328 Quad-Core SOC (4x Cortex A53 @ 1.5Ghz)

  • GPU: Mali 450MP2

  • RAM: 1 GiB or 2 GiB or 4 GiB LPDDR3

  • Storage: eMMC module slot, microSD slot, 16 MiB SPI Flash

  • USB: 2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0

  • Architecture: arm64

  • Ethernet: 10/100/1000, RJ45

  • WiFi: None, use a USB WiFi device

Non-Free Status

  • Non-free blobs required: No

  • WiFi: Not available

Known Issues

  • FreedomBox does not work when booted from USB 3.0 port (but works from eMMC, SD card or USB 2.0 disk).

  • FreedomBox does not work when booted form the top USB 2.0 port with some u-boot firmware versions (the one listed above). It only works with the bottom USB 2.0 port (the one closer to the board).