Sinovoip Banana Pi M64

Despite its name the M64 is totally incompatible to Banana Pi/M1/M1+/Pro/M2/M2+/M2 Ultra/M3 due to a different SoC - requiring different boot loaders and drivers. It's another attempt to cash-in on the Banana Pi's popularity with a SBC sharing only Brand-name, form factor and GPIO header.

= Identification =

The PCB has the following silkscreened on it: BPi-M64 v1.0 alongside with the BananaPi (Bpi) logo.

= Sunxi support =

Current status
From the software point of view this device is similar to the Pine64 (similar DRAM, same Ethernet and PMIC), so basic support should work with some Pine64 image. In fact the manufacturer seems to offer Pine64 images based on longsleep's builds.

Images
End Users: Here are links to current images that are not community supported:
 * http://www.banana-pi.org/m64-download.html
 * http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-m64-new-image-bpi-m64-win10iotcore10586-beta0-1/2108

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

Mainline U-Boot
Use the pine64_plus_defconfig build target for now until a BPi-M64 specific target gets introduced.

Mainline kernel
No official DT yet, but sun50i-a64-pine64-plus.dtb should work for the time being (no eMMC, though).

= Expansion Port =

The Banana Pi M64 has the usual 40-pin, 0.1" Raspberry Pi 2 compatible connector with several low-speed interfaces.

Pin PC1, which carries the SPI0-MISO signal, is not available on a header, since it is connected to the eMMC chip. So booting from a SPI flash connected to header pins will not work on the Banana Pi M64.

= Tips, Tricks, Caveats =

FEL mode
The FEL button (called U-Boot key in the manual) triggers FEL mode.

The boot order is: SD card first, then eMMC, then FEL. Pressing the FEL button always triggers FEL mode. A SD card without an eGON header will be skipped, it continues on eMMC then. If boot0 fails to locate U-Boot, it will enter FEL mode.

USB
The two type A receptacles are connected to a Terminus Technology Inc. 4-Port hub on the lower PCB side that is connected to the SoC. PCB traces on the board provide a 3rd USB port connected to the hub on solder wholes next to the 40 pin GPIO header.

= Adding a serial port =



There is a three pin UART header next to the Ethernet socket, it is connected to UART0. The pins are clearly labelled with GND, RX and TX. Attach a 3.3V UART interface as described in the UART howto.

= Pictures =

= See also =

From a software point of view there is not much difference from the Pine64, which is the main development vehicle for the A64 SoC support. So please check the Pine64 page for further information. Since the vendor does not provide schematics (timely) and doesn't follow Allwinner's A64 reference design closely as usual customers/users have to start reverse engineering. This thread might contain more information over time.

Manufacturer images
The official BananaPi M64 page provides already some images, those with Linux based on longsleep's Pine64 images. Be aware that they are based on already outdated BSP kernel/u-boot versions and partially use an ARMv6 userland causing unnecessary performance implications: http://www.banana-pi.org/m64-download.html