Cubieboard2 is an update of the popular Cubieboard and replaces the A10 SoC with the pin-compatible A20 SoC.

Identification

Cubietech Cubieboard2
Manufacturer	CubieTech, Cubieboard
Dimensions	10cm x 6cm
Release Date	June 2013
Website	Cubieboard2 Product page
Specifications
SoC	A20 @ 1Ghz
DRAM	1GiB DDR3 @ 480MHz (GT8UB256M16BP-BG, H5TQ4G63AFR-PBC)
NAND	4GB
Power	DC 5V @ 2A (4.0mm/1.7mm barrel plug - centre positive)
Features
Video	HDMI
Audio	3.5mm headphone plug, 3.5mm microphone plug, HDMI
Network	10/100 Ethernet (Realtek RTL8201CP)
Storage	µSD, SATA (+5v power)
USB	2 USB2.0 Host, 1 USB2.0 OTG
Other	IRDA (Vishay HS0038B)
Headers	2 48pin expansion ports which export (amongst others): I2C (TWI), SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, touch-panel

The board helpfully reads "Cubietech" "Cubieboard.org" and has an A20 chip on it.

Sunxi support

Current status

The cubieboard is well represented within the main sunxi developer community and has excellent support both in u-boot as well as 3.4 and mainline kernels.

Images

Cubietech also has a bunch of official firmwares available on their download page.

HW-Pack

Generating a HW pack for the cubieboard2 is easily done with the sunxi-bsp and well supported.

BSP

Under the BSP the cubieboard2 is simply known as cubieboard2. Just run:

./configure cubieboard2
make

Manual build

You can build things for yourself by following our Manual build howto and by choosing from the configurations available below.

U-Boot

Sunxi/Legacy U-Boot

Use the Cubieboard2 build target.

Upstream/Mainline U-Boot

Use the Cubieboard2 build target.

Linux Kernel

Sunxi/Legacy Kernel

Use the cubieboard2.fex file.

Upstream/Mainline kernel

Use the sun7i-a20-cubieboard2.dtb device-tree binary.

Tips, Tricks, Caveats

The only difference between the first version of the Cubieboard (with the A10, mistakenly known as the "original" Cubieboard, but both versions are "original") and the Cubieboard2 (second version with the A20) is the SoC itself. The other hardware is completely identical. Because of this many of the Tips, Tricks, Caveats of the Cubieboard1 regarding the hardware can be applied to the Cubieboard2 as well.

FEL mode

The FEL button triggers FEL mode.

Machine ID mismatch

There is a difference in the naming of the sun7i platform between the cubieboard2 stock u-boot and the sunxi u-boot. This might cause the kernel to refuse to load, with a message like this:

Error: unrecognized/unsupported machine ID (r1 = 0x000010bb).

Available machine support:

ID (hex)        NAME
00000f35        sun7i

Please check your kernel config and/or bootloader.

You need to add the following to your U-Boot boot.cmd for the cubieboard stock variant:

setenv machid 0x00000f35

or (for the sunxi variant)

setenv machid 0x000010bb

Adding a serial port

Cubieboard UART pads

There is a nice 2.54mm pin header near to the SoC. All you have to do is connect the correct wires, according to our UART howto or the Cubieboard TTL howto. Do not connect Vcc as that might damage your board.

Pictures

Hardware documentation

https://github.com/lipro-armbian/pddocs/tree/master/Cubietech/CubieBoard2

Also known as

Like the first Cubieboard, the Cubieboard2 was very popular on its own. Therefor, no rebadging has taken place, but who knows, there might be some bad chinese rip-offs out there, which carry the same name.

Cubietech Cubieboard2

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