rPi 2 announced, quad core A7, 1GB RAM

[CentralWare]

Has anyone ventured into the direction of the "Banana Pi" ?
I went to pick up a B+ yesterday but after seeing the B-Pi specs I held off.
http://www.bananapi.org/p/product.html

The B+ would have run me about $35 after tax (their B price tags locally are actually more than B+??)
The Banana on Amazon I think I saw listed for $45 and their free shipping over $35.

From what little reading I did do, it's claimed the B-Pi and the R-Pi are "almost alike" (functionality) save for the fact the the Banana has a singular SATA port (did not indicate, but am assuming SATA-I), 1GB DDR3 and GB ethernet, thus the board's a tad larger, all the while running on the AllWinner A20 chip and claims Raspbian runs fine under it*.
http://www.bananapi.org/2014/05/is-banana-pi-clone-of-raspberry-pi.html

Prior to the RPi2 announcement, this was the direction I was going to take.
http://www.amazon.com/Banana-Mini-Open-Source-Mainboard/dp/B00MWA5JKM/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A11Z0YA88UDZFR

The GBe has me enthused for different reasons.  First, it's claimed the B+ is using usb2ether for their network interface, which to me is going to kill usb bandwidth; a serious problem if you're using usb storage or other high-traffic devices.  The BPi claims its own RealTek controller if memory serves.

Slightly dated:
http://hardware-libre.fr/2014/06/raspberry-vs-banana-hardware-duel/
I'm curious as to what the RPi2 specs will look like if the same comparison were done.

Please shed your thoughts between the Pi (B+), Pi2 and BPi, especially and most importantly from a TCL perspective.

[bmarkus]

centralware@

see http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,17895.0.html

Statement valid for Banana Pi - BTW which has nothing to do with Raspberry Pi. Name is misleading on purpose to get higher media attention My sympathy goes for Odroid line.

armv6 and next armv7 port can be run on most of the ARM boards, key issue is booting. My personal preferences Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black and Odroid, these are the boards I have or I have access.

Community contribution to get piCore running on other boards highly appreciated. I will try to help as much as I can.

[CentralWare]

@bmarkus: Thank you for the insight - and the assistance offer!
Looking at the B-Pi specs I knew this wouldn't be an "out of the box" project, but few of mine rarely are!  I even have the inkling of ripping a RISC/AtMel project with TC at the helm if I can strip the kernel enough to do so.  (My prototype has a whopping 8MB flash so I'm extremely limited for the init, but stubbornness tells me "It CAN be done!")

[curaga]

All rpis lack in USB, and indeed use ethernet over USB, making them completely unsuitable for any server use. Those with proper ethernet tend to be better, but you need to make sure they're well built and supported - odroid C1 for example has a proper 1Gbps ethernet, but it has such lacking software that it only works at 100Mbps and even there sporadically (second-hand info).

So it all depends on the use case. I'm getting a rpi2 mainly to play with the gpu, and perhaps to do a few digital signage projects, all something that does not use networking much or USB drives.

[Paul_123]

All rpis lack in USB, and indeed use ethernet over USB, making them completely unsuitable for any server use. Those with proper ethernet tend to be better, but you need to make sure they're well built and supported - odroid C1 for example has a proper 1Gbps ethernet, but it has such lacking software that it only works at 100Mbps and even there sporadically (second-hand info).

So it all depends on the use case. I'm getting a rpi2 mainly to play with the gpu, and perhaps to do a few digital signage projects, all something that does not use networking much or USB drives.

They just patched the ethernet drivers for the OD-C1.  It now connects at Gigabit.   But this board is still in it's infancy stage.     Running the stock ubuntu image, the GB connection still resets occasionally, but my piCore image running on the OD-C1 has been pretty stable.  I'm working now to pare down the initrd to a more manageable Core size.

Bmarkus.......   any tips to figuring out what modules are required on the initrd?     Right now, I have everything built in, and lsmod doesn't list anything, but If I leave out most modules, it complete the boot after uncompressing the initrd.

[bmarkus]

My RPi 2 arrived to the local element14 partner, I will pick up in the next days. I will report first findings on Thursday or Friday.

[bmarkus]

Bmarkus.......   any tips to figuring out what modules are required on the initrd?     Right now, I have everything built in, and lsmod doesn't list anything, but If I leave out most modules, it complete the boot after uncompressing the initrd.

Hardware related:

- modules required for the hardware to work like SD card, Ethernet, USB, DMA,  RTC (if exists), video etc. drivers
- filesystem drivers to read FAT and Ext4/Ext3/Ext2 partitions

Tiny Core related:

- looopback driver
- squash fs driver
- zswap and compressed RAM

There are few others which are not needed for Core to work but used by several modules and not possible to add to a kernel module tcz, such as rfkill, basic encryption, generic libs, etc

Study modules in and module TCZ's of current piCore. However due to the different kernels and kernel configs there are minor differences.

When ready, let's make available a beta test version and start using it with openssh, wireless, cifs, audio, etc. We will see shortly if a module is missing. If you are in doubt, use modinfo command to see module dependencies. Also check dmesg for error messages on modules.

[meo]

Hi guys!

Got my Raspberry Pi 2 Model B today and it's really fast and stable as far as I can tell. Running Raspbian at the moment with some tweaks. A huge difference to the previous model.

Have fun,
meo

[bmarkus]

First impressions:

• board can't be powered from USB
• piCore 6.0 doesn't boot

[bmarkus]

Now piCore is running on RPi2 and other boards with the latest 3.18.6 kernel. piCore-6.1alpha2 images will be uploaded later today.

[andyj]

Just got my RPi 2. I need to build some modules for my USB display. Can we get a kernel tree, or will I need to build my own using the running config.gz? If so, how do I fix the "+" issue?

[bmarkus]

Just got my RPi 2. I need to build some modules for my USB display. Can we get a kernel tree, or will I need to build my own using the running config.gz? If so, how do I fix the "+" issue?

What do you mean kernel tree?

[andyj]

The directory the kernel was compiled in. I know it can be big. Then I could build my modules natively on the Pi. Otherwise I have to build the whole kernel from source. Not impossible, it just takes a while, and I'm still not sure how to fix the "+" problem.

[bmarkus]

Current alpha2 is based on 3.18.6 kernel. I will make alpha3 in a week hopefully with an updated kernel, not yet decided to go for 3.18.7 or 3.19.0. My advice to wait for next release.

[andyj]

I noticed when trying to load alsa that there wasn't a alsa-modules-KERNEL for this version. I also noticed a modules tarball, is this DT related? For now we load modules the old-fashioned way? Not a big deal, as long as I know. It's been a while since a kernel was designated LTS, so maybe 3.18 will be it? Does that have any influence on the decision, or have there been serious gains in the hardware support in 3.19 to make going there worth it? FWIW the raspicam and libnfc extentions seem to work.