[icelancer]

The problem - as always - with all the clones is that their ecosystems are either immature or are complete crap. Most of the Rockchip knockoffs are technically superior at a better price point, and most importantly, available for purchase, but their websites are hacked-together Chinese clones with broken downloads, non-verifiable server OSes, and zero documentation.

RPi has a foothold primarily due to the community and software support. I'd love to see that get broken up, but building that took years, which is not what most fly-by-night places and clone shops are interested in doing. I say this as someone who largely depends on RPi 3 and 4 models for embedded work and would prefer to switch to something like oDroid (and we have to some degree), not necessarily as someone who is an RPi lover.

I hope that the foundation's supply is for real and the pricing gets down to normal market rates.

[zen_1]

At least with the rockchip-based designs you can get the TRMs for the SOC.

https://github.com/Hao-boyan/rk3588-TRM-and-Datasheet https://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Main_Page

For the raspberry Pi 4b, the publicly available documentation for the BCM2711 SoC is laughable, barely 160-odd pages long and missing key details (such as which timers are accessible from the ARM core, and which are accessible from the GPU).

P.S. if anyone knows where to find the full TRM for the broadcom BCM2711, I'd be really grateful if you got in touch or sent me the pdf.

[shaunsingh0207]

I've switched to using the pine64 boards for exactly that reason. All of the RPI model <X> boards feel like they're targeting hobbyists who want to build a retropi setup or school project and just need working software.

The pine boards are far more open, and the whole company is just "we give you the hardware, you self serve the software". They have a few good "pi alternatives", and some more "exotic" stuff. I've been playing around with their ox64 board and am enjoying it so far

[sitzkrieg]

good luck. not to mention not even full schematics of rpis.. being in broadcoms bed and not even being able to buy standalone chips. and making hobbists think its an open platform when its one of the furthest away from that, ugh.

the effort is better spent on nearly any other arm soc

[bitwize]

I smell an opportunity here. The first company to ship a chinesium Pi clone that's ServerReady is going to be a serious contender.