PersonalBSD.org

The Pinebook Pro is a Linux and *BSD ARM laptop from PINE64

It features an IPS 1080p 14″ LCD panel, a premium magnesium alloy shell, high capacity eMMC storage, a 10,000 mAh capacity battery, and the modularity that only an open source project can deliver.

Key features include: the RK3399 SOC; USB-C for data, video-out and power-in (3A 5V); privacy switches for the microphone, BT/WiFi module, and camera; and expandable storage via NVMe (PCIe 4x) with an optional adapter.

The Pinebook Pro is equipped with 4GB LPDDR4 system memory, high capacity eMMC flash storage, and 128Mb SPI boot Flash. The I/O includes: 1x micro SD card reader (bootable), 1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB type C Host with DP 1.2 and power-in, PCIe 4x for an NVMe SSD drive (requires an optional adapter), and UART (via the headphone jack by setting an internal switch).

The keyboard and trackpad both use the USB 2.0 protocol. The LCD panel uses eDP MiPi display protocol.

Many different Operating Systems (OS) are freely available from the open source community and partner projects. These include various flavors of Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Manjaro, etc.), NetBSD and OpenBSD.

We will be installing FreeBSD on Pinebook Pro.

For this we need

1. Modified Mainline U-Boot.
2. Patches to the FreeBSD kernel.

Boards

History

Pine64 initially operated as Pine Microsystems Inc. (Fremont, California), founded by TL Lim, the inventor of the PopBox and Popcorn Hour series of media players sold under the Syabas and Cloud Media brands.

In 2015 Pine Microsystems offered its first product, the Pine A64, a single-board computer designed to compete with the popular Raspberry Pi in both power and price. The A64 was first funded through a Kickstarter crowdfunding drive in December 2015 which raised over $1.7 million. The Kickstarter project was overshadowed by delays and shipping problems. The original Kickstarter page referred to the Pine64 Inc. based in Delaware, but all devices for the Kickstarter campaign were manufactured and sold by Pine Microsystems Inc. based in Fremont, California.

In January 2020, Pine Microsystems Inc. was dissolved while Pine Store Limited was incorporated on December 5, 2019 in Hong Kong. As of late 2020, the standard form contract of pine64.com binds all orders to the laws of Malaysia, while the products are shipped from warehouses in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, PRC.

Vendors

The Kobol Team is a group of passionate people based in Singapore who love to build and design their own network and data storage appliances. Our background ranges from aerospace industry to data science, gathering a wide spectrum of engineering skills and experiences. We strongly believe in open source and always held the vision to create an open platform to let people express their creativity and hack around. Helios4, the Open Source and Open Hardware Network Attached Storage, was our first project and our way to contribute back to the OSS community. After this first successful project, we decided to create the company Kobol Innovations Pte. Ltd. and to put all our energy in extending our range of NAS products and solutions.

KOBOL INNOVATIONS PTE. LTD. (the “Company”) is a Exempt Private Company Limited by Shares, incorporated on 22 June 2018 (Friday) in Singapore. The address of the Company’s registered office is at the TONG ENG BUILDING building. The Company’s principal activity is development of other software and programming activities n.e.c. with manufacture of computers and peripheral equipment n.e.c. as the secondary activity.

Vendors

Hardware Specifications

Soc
SoC Model	Rockchip RK3399 – Hexacore 2x Cortex-A72 + 4x Cortex-A53
SoC Architecture	ARMv8-A 64-bit
CPU Frequency	A72 : 1.8GHz, A53 : 1.4GHz
Additional Features	GPU Mali-T860MP4
Memory
LPDDR4 RAM	4GB
eMMC 5.1 NAND Flash	16GB
SPI NOR Flash	128Mb
HDD/SSD Interfaces
SATA 3.0 Ports	5
M.2 SATA 3.0 Slot	1 (shared with SATA port 1)
Max Raw Capacity	80 TB (16 TB drive x 5)
External Interfaces
Multi-Gigabit LAN Port (2.5Gbe)	1
Gigabit LAN Port (1Gbe)	1
USB Type-C	1
USB 3.0	3
microSD (SDIO 3.0)	1
Developer Interfaces
GPIO	16
I2C	1
UEXT	1
Others
PWM FAN	2
On-Board HDD Power	yes
Built-in UPS	yes
RTC Battery	yes
DC input	Dual 12V inputs
Wake-on-LAN	yes
Front Panel Extension	yes

Boards

Helios64 is a powerful ARM board specially designed for Network Attached Storage.

This product was developed by Kobol TEAM and announced on January 2, 2020.

It harnesses its processing capabilities from the Rockchip RK3399 SoC.

Links

• Kobol https://kobol.io/
• Kobol WiKi
• Kobol Forum

NAS