Re: Oversimplification

On 6/2/21 7:13 AM, Milan Obuch wrote:
> On Sun, 30 May 2021 17:49:01 -0400, George Mitchell
> <george+freebsd@m5p.com> wrote:
> 
>> I've never been shy about oversimplifying complex questions, so here
>> goes: What's the ARM system that presents the least hassle to a
>> prospective FreeBSD user?  Here's what I mean by low hassle:
>>
>> 1. Widely available.
>> 2. Runs some standard FreeBSD image with minimal (or no) tweaking.
>> 3. I suspect ARM64 means less hassle than ARM32.
>> 4. Friendly to an external high-speed (at least USB 3; possibly SATA?)
>>      disk.
>> 5. Hopefully 8GB on-board memory, though 4GB is probably okay if high
>>      speed swapping is available (see point 4).
>> 6. Affordable, but not cheap.
>>
>> And next on my Santa list ...                            -- George
>>
> 
> Did you consider RockPro64 from pine64.com? Two models are available,
> with 2 GB RAM and 4 GB RAM. There is PCIe x4 slot, USB ports (3.0 and
> 2.0, four total), so your prerequisites are probably met. Also, you can
> download FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-ROCKPRO64.img.xz from
> FreeBSD ftp site and start.
> 
> I could test it in past for some days and it worked. I did not have
> opportunity to test what could be connected to PCIe slot, but from the
> same vendor some cards could be had as well - dual SATA-II or M.2/NGFF
> interface card.
> 
> Just one a bit odd detail using stock image - console line speed was
> 1.5 Mb/s. I spent some time figuring this. 4 GB version currently out
> of stock, unfortunately.
> 
> They are preparing Quartz64 card, up to 8 GB RAM, no ETA yet.
> 
> Regards,
> Milan
> 
Thanks for the response!                                 -- George