https://pine64.com/product/soquartz-8gb-compute-module-w/ I think they will, since they mount on RPI Compute Module connectors. Do we know if they'll work with the NVMe slot? Thanks!

this is what i am hoping... and since they are available for shipping i think i'm going to order one or two to test when the tpi2 arrives

We are going to test and report on these modules

Jeff doesn't say they don't work, just that the software ecosystem isn't as good as raspberry pi. I've got 6 of the soquartz on the blade carriers and they were dead simple to deploy

What distro were you installing?

Yeah the software isn't fully baked yet, but I think it will eventually

jeff's article was also from nearly a year ago. i skimmed through the github issue he linked and they got a lot of it figured out within a few weeks

Armbian UIbuntu Jammy (https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/SOQuartz_Software_Releases) One of the nice features of the Pine64 boards is a socketed eMMC module. You can socket it to a usb key for image burning, then back to the board.

But that’s the thing. If the best OS available for those boards is Armbian then I’d honestly wait for CM4 or see what’s the Linux support in RK1 looks like. I intend to use my tpi for a Kube cluster and I’d really like to use a distro meant to be used this way (fcos, flatcar or similar). Thanks for the link though I’ll check it out!

You can lay k3OS over armbian, and it'd work fine

Nothing with a CM4 form factor will work with the NVMe slot because there is only one PCIe slot exposed with a CM4 connector.

spec of the CPU - 1.8GHz https://www.96rocks.com/blog/2020/10/21/rockchip-rk3566-highlights/

For me it's working though, not top performance but definitely working with decent performance for my home Rook/CEPH cluster.

that's nice to know!

Now my setup is composed of 3 CM4 plus 3 Soquartz on a DeskPi Super 6C all part of an 8 nodes Kubernetes cluster (the two other nodes are two Helios64 acting as control plane nodes and also as iSCSI targets). Funny to get this running but it works nicely once setup.

noice

Have now to figure out how to transfer my docker workload on it.

I have a rockpro64 and two pine64's and a couple Rpis

Nice

do you both feel like the SOQUARTZ performs ok in comparison to the RPI CM4?

I'll get some for sure. I expect it to perform as well as the pi4 for compute purposes. My existing pine hardware has worked super well.

i was able to get 2 (they are sold out atm) looking forward to trying them out

I've got 6 of the soquartz modules so I can test it pretty quickly

Out of interest as I don’t know much about it, what’s the issue with Armbian?

First it looks like I was wrong and at least SOPine is supported by some distros I care about (Fedora IoT had it as a reference platform even). But the distro choice comes down to individual preferences really. I want something that uses atomic upgrades, supports SElinux and is minimal. Even more important is first class distro support I want to be sure to be able to install XYZ even a year from now and not need to chase random images or precise kernel versions down some wikis. My first choice would have been Flatcar, second Fedora CoreOS. But - if armbian works for you then great! I’ll just wait a bit for other’s experience in the meantime.

The thing to keep in mind with Pine is they release products to the community before any software exists because the community produces the software. Support get's upstreamed to mainline linux but it takes a while for it to make it to distributions.

been using a pinebookpro for over a year. it's pretty solid

I can see why Armbian would not be a good fit for your requirements

I just got a pinebook pro from someone who didn't want to muck with it hard. After getting through the bootloader stuff, it's a champ. I still need to work on the actual software install, I think I did some stuff wrong. I have also wanted to get a build of PopOS working on it, that'd be ideal.

actually still rocking the manjaro that came with. rolling release so it stays bleeding edge and all that but it's been good.

Yep that's what I got on there. Towboot made everything so much easier

I've been eyeing those as well. hope the answer is yes

I would hazard to guess that if you use tpi cm4 adapter, the pins needed for the nvme won't be there

possibly. This thing uses the same CM mount tho

Testing is required

Makes sense.

Still only one pcie connection on the SOQUARTZ - the Blade just routes it to the M.2 NVMe slot, and doesn't have a miniPCie or full-size x1 slot. It should be possible to make an alternate CM4 adapter that enables the NVMe slot (for both SOQUARTZ and rpi CM4), at the expense of losing the miniPCIe, SATA, or USB3 connections (depending on the slot you use).

Yes, and that was already proposed. For now there are no plans to make another adapter board designs, but this can potentially be a thing n the future

hi, question, just got 3 SOQuartz 2G, anyone know how to flash OS image to the onboard EMMC?

i just bought 3 of the 4gig SoQuartz. Another comment mentioned using an adapter https://discord.com/channels/754950670175436841/754950670175436848/1103372677302992977

Yes, this one : https://turingpi.com/product/cm4-adapter/

Yes, I already have this, and put SOQuartz on it, but it can't boot from SD card

Is anyone running their tp2 with them yet?

I just got mine running. Able to successfully boot, ssh, and setup a single node k8s cluster. Next step is adding the other nodes in.

very nice. maybe will give that a try then

I've had no luck getting k3s or microk8s cluster going on my soquartz boards. DietPi boots fine, but is missing the kernel functionality to run kubernetes. https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issues/6389

oh nice... I just saw a mention of plebian on the pine64 blog. seems to be a quartz specific build

this might be kind of a stupid question, but which orientation do you put the quartz in the adapter? can't tell which one is up lol It was indeed a dumb question, the screw holes only line up in one orientation

For what it's worth, I've tried LXC/LXD and I can confirm IT JUST WORKS, smoothly... Setting up the cluster from scratch and ready for production took a little less than one hour (the four nodes are currently running Plebian but you can also use Manjaro ARM on any or all nodes) but it can take less than this if you use MicroCloud and Netdata (for the monitoring) which are both a one line command doing all the dirty work for you 😇