ARM Board Recommendations.

covacat said:
but no graphics. your best bet on freebsd is probably a low power x64 box.
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I would agree with this except for the GPIO usage. That is really the main advantage.
FreeBSD GPIO on AMD64 is limited to a few boards. Minnowboard and APU.

For too long I was depending on a single digit LCD readout for AMP's used. So I finally built an inline meter power cord.
I put 5.5x2.1mm barrel M/F jacks on the ends and I used an old Walmart Multimeter and cut the probes.
I have started with the 10A port and that gives me two digits of resolution.
Inital testing on Station P1 Pro with RK3399 with CPUs downclocked to 600mhz via sysctl.
12VDC 0.26A Idle and 0.31A MAX with 6 cores running stress. 3.8W to 4.6W max

Built my own StationP1 Pro U-Boot on FreeBSD Ports from the roc-pc-rk3399_defconfig modified and now I have USB keyboard working. HDMI as well.
OS on 32B internal eMMC and u-boot on microSD for now. I did use Linux DTB for the PRO model.

The Station P1-Pro has a power button and LED that actually work.
I can shutdown the board with software and restart it with the button.
What does not work is shutting down from power button pressing.
My USB keyboard backlight goes off as well for power savings. So PMIC is working good..

It has taken me a while to get this Station P1-Pro working well. I have learned alot about manipulating u-boot ports.
When a board is not supported by mainline U-Boot it can be frustrating.

How about this crazy VVDN FreeScale server. It uses ARM32 server setup. It is not a SuperMicro NAS but uses their case.
www.ebay.com

Supermicro CSE-111 VVDN DT4CS NAS Sever 24GB PC4 x2 ARM926DJ-S CPUs x2 759W PSUs | eBay

Model : DT4CS. Ram : 24GB PC4-1866. Processor : x2 ARM926EJ-S Integrated. Power Supplies : x2 PET750-12-050NA. Heat Sinks :x2. Credit Card. Ac Adapter / Power Cord .
www.ebay.com
 
if you need gpio and don't need graphics or efi fb is ok arm will do better than x86. still crappy to build ports.
for a headless + ethernet you can get it working with sensible less power than x86. also serial console is easier on arm and you have it from the start.
i ran a h3 board as a printserver powered from a hp printer usb port. the port purpose was to install fonts or something.
 
bakul said:
I was pleasantly surprised that an old mac mini I bought uses 6 watts when idle. No external power adapter, i915 graphics, can add a thunderbird ethernet adapter, if I want to build a router, solid build, fan, rtc, etc made it a much better choice than any arm board for use as a server.
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That is impressive, especially if it's an x86 box. I need something with better reliability and availability than old second hand hardware, though.
 
Jose said:
I need something with better reliability and availability than old second hand hardware, though.
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Apple hardware is generally more reliable than PCs & mac minis are even better as they have only one moving part: a fan! I have used various Pis + other arm boards and they've all been more trouble and more disappointing. Non pi boards usually are poorly supported by their vendors, all the cases are weird and not very well made, you often get underperforming power adapters, etc. Mac Minis should be easy to get on ebay.
 
Seems Jose wanted an Arm board for more their lower power requirement than anything else. I pointed out one can get pretty good low power (idle) with x86-64 mac minis.
 
bakul said:
Apple hardware is generally more reliable than PCs & mac minis are even better as they have only one moving part: a fan!
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Agreed. Ten year old stuff usually has one foot in the grave, though. Yes, even Apple stuff. The Macbook Air I bought my mom about 6 years ago just bit the dust. And a replacement might not be readily available at a reasonable price depending on market conditions.

bakul said:
I have used various Pis + other arm boards and they've all been more trouble and more disappointing. Non pi boards usually are poorly supported by their vendors, all the cases are weird and not very well made, you often get underperforming power adapters, etc. Mac Minis should be easy to get on ebay.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it does seem the ARM stuff is weird and crufty
😞
 
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