Sinovoip Banana Pi M3

'''Be aware that the board manufacturer is not cooperative. Despite its name the M3 is incompatible to Banana Pi/M1/M1+/Pro due to a different SoC requiring different boot loaders and drivers.''' It's just another attempt to cash in on the Banana Pi's popularity with another incompatible SBC sharing brand, name, form factor and GPIO header.

= Identification =

It's an SBC with blue PCB silkscreened "BPI-M3" in white where you can easily recognise A83T/AXP813 on the PCB's top side.

= Sunxi support =

Unsupported.

Current status
All OS images the manufacturer provides are based on Allwinner's 3.4.39 kernel. Mainlining efforts for the M3's A83T SoC just started so things won't improve that soon.

Images

 * Official download page with M3 section containing preliminary Linux 3.4.39 images
 * Android 5.1.1 image provided by SinoVoip

Manual build
No support in the community maintained sunxi-3.4 kernel is planned. Allwinner's kernel sources for the A83T can be found now here.

Sunxi/Legacy U-Boot
The manufacturer uses an u-boot.2011-something version without support for script.bin

Mainline U-Boot
Use the  build target.

Sunxi/Legacy Kernel
Since the M3's bsp uses an aging u-boot from 2011 no script.bin support exists therefore you've to adjust display settings in the fex file. Some can be found in SinoVoip's M3 repo.

Mainline kernel
Use the  device-tree binary.

= Tips, Tricks, Caveats =

SATA
Be aware that the A83T SoC used on the M3 isn't SATA capable and therefore the SATA port is provided by an USB-to-SATA-bridge. This means you can neither expect SATA performance nor full SATA functionality. While the used GL830 bridge supports S.M.A.R.T. attributes it does not support S.M.A.R.T. status notification (overall health indicator of the disk – instead of PASSED or FAILED you will only get SMART Status not supported: Incomplete response, ATA output registers missing).

Expected SATA performance is even worse compared to Orange Pi Plus that relies on the same old GL830 chip since on the M3 all externally available USB host ports and the SATA bridge are connected through the internal hub to one single USB port and therefore have to share bandwidth.

FEL mode
The button triggers  FEL mode.

= Adding a serial port (voids warranty) =



Locating the UART
= Pictures =

= See also =


 * a so called 'User Manual' and some hardware docs
 * Schematics V1.1