Any good alternative to Raspberry for Arm64?

[Klaus Küchemann]

> Am 28.03.2021 um 19:13 schrieb Ian Lepore <ian at freebsd.org>:
> ….. Virtually any alternative arm64 system that
> runs freebsd at all is a superior choice over the Rpi family.  

:-), 2 years ago I would have said that you’re right…. the times they are a changing , scoobidoo...

> Anything
> else will have better support from the freebsd developers including,
> especially, the professional developers who are paid by companies to
> support freebsd on arm/arm64.

your paid colleagues support aarch64 in general, RPI4 is aarch64.
You vastly underestimate your other colleagues who developed special rpi4-drivers&hacks !

>  Nobody is paying anybody to support
> freebsd on rpi, and consequently all you get in the way of support is
> half-baked theories and anecdotal reports from other people struggling
> to use an rpi with freebsd.

Rpi4 is "full-baked“-supported :-) , 8GB RAM, genet, pcie(USB 3.0) ,
Supports JTAG, netboot etc. , it never crashed for me the last months/years.
While some drivers still missing, that’s also the case for other boards.
As a „power to serve“-cheap-board it`s fully supported, no problems (since the beginning of the 1st cpu-hack)!

> If you're looking to save every penny possible and are willing to put
> up with endless frustration and things not working, get an rpi.  If you
> want a usable arm64 computer that runs freebsd, get anything else.
> 
you mean the missing documentation-frustration?
While there’s even a little docs available, but e.g. Crowston didn’t need docs, he used JTAG :-) Ha Ha 
For still  missing drivers the documentation is in other BSDs or tux.(e.g.  genet -driver was based on other BSD-driver).

I didn’t save every penny, have RK3388, RK3399 and some other archs, even Risc-V.
None of the other boards can be considered as „SMOOTHLY“ working because of paid developers,
Long list of examples available , but that`not the topic.

Some people(and developers) didn’t understand the closed source environment of rpi-firmware. ( and other things like u-boot,eeprom)...
That’s why we are here and do support the RPI4 by full-baked theories, anecdotal reports, mystical patches and extraordinary configuration-hints. Ha Ha :-)

Regards


K.