[REVIEW] Guess What Came In The Mail: Pine64

I am fascinated with tiny computers and the things that a unit like the popular RaspberryPi enables. And when I saw the Pine64 on Kickstarter, I was intrigued. A 64-bit computer for $15!!!! No way!!! I became a backer at the original $15 price (+shipping, but really, at this price shipping doesn't matter).

I watched the Kickstarter move to become a successfully funded project, and then watched some people get frustrated that they didn't get their P64 in February when originally told. Apparently they didn't think about what would happen to an unexpectedly popular and successful Kickstarter campaign. Plus, I guess I value my $15 pledge much less than some of them do. The way I look at Kickstarter, I fund the dreams of other people. When I tell them I'm gonna give them some $, it's a dream that I like, but still a DREAM. If their dream fizzles, then that sucks. I'm still glad I could help them realize their dream. But if they succeed and I get to be part of something cool, then Bonus For Me! I helped make a Veronica Marrs movie, and now I've helped make a $15 computer become a reality. Even if I saw nothing, it was all money well spent.

All that said...  I got a package in the mail today. Guess what it was.....

Guess what came in the mail!

Yup, I am now a proud owner of a 64-bit hand-sized computer with 2gb of memory!

When I first became a web monkey, I was building enterprise-level apps on a Pentium server that wasn't even in the neighborhood of thinking about multiple cores. I still have some "large" 256 MEGABYTE memory chips from those machines. I could build my entire system architecture in virtual machines on my laptop. The power that is now able to be packed into a palm-sized machine is crazy.

Anyway.... back to my mail.

I was an early backer of this thing, and more importantly, a believer. I was a bit giddy when I opened up my mailbox today. I knew what it had to be, but I still felt like a kid in a candy shop. So what did I get....

A PINE64!!! <shamelessPlug>www.pine64.org</shamelessPlug>

For those who haven't hear about this one, it's a VERY tiny computer, a lot like a RaspberryPi, but it's only about 15 bucks. You just can't beat that price. I saw it; I backed it; I bought some accessories: I have it now.

The Package Contents!

Here's my review:

In my former life as a Fulfillment Guy, I would have wanted to use sturdier packaging to prevent damage in transit. I received this thing, with the accessories I ordered, in a normal padded envelope. I would have preferred heftier packaging, but nothing was even remotely damaged, and most importantly, let's not forget that this is essentially A $15 COMPUTER!!!

When I unpacked everything, I assumed that the larger box was the actual unit. WRONG. That was the acrylic case that I ordered. The unit is TINY. To be fair, it's larger than my older model RaspberryPi, but if I hold it up next to another motherboard, I'm not sure this scale is much of an issue.


After getting everything unpacked, I began putting it all together. I bought the acrylic case from the site, and it's a little bit bigger than I thought it would be. I expected something more commensurate with the form-factor of the unit itself. But the size isn't really an issue, because the case looks AWESOME!

Pine64 Acrylic Case

To this point, putting the thing together has been dead simple. The hardest part I've found so far is WHERE ARE ALL MY POWER STRIPS???

Now that I've found power, I need to crank this thing up. But a computer won't do much without some sort of operating system. I was lazy. I went for the first option on the Pine64 Wiki (wiki.pine64.org): Debian Linux with Mate GUI by lenny.raposo. Thank you, Lenny!

• I used my RasPi tools to prep the SD card for the OS: SDFormatter to prep the disk and then Win32DiskImager to write it. It was a 1.4gb download, but it extracted to an 8gb image. Make sure you have enough SD card for it.



Pine64 vs Mobo

• One very big difference between this and the RasPi is in the size of the card the OS runs on. RaspberryPi runs on a full-sized SD card. The Pine64 runs on a micro-SD card. Many modern SD cards already come with an adapter for a micro-SD to a full-size SD port, but we don't need the adapter here.

RasPi vs Pine64

This unit is tiny. But it's still larger than my older RaspberryPi. However, to put it into perspective, it's not even worth comparing the size to a full motherboard.

Now that we're all hooked up, it's time for the moment of truth: Does this thing power on? Fewer things in life are more disappointing than spending time to carefully put together a computer only to have nothing happen when you finally push the power button.

FLASHY LIGHTS == POWER!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, here we go......

AND..... BOOTED!!!

WE HAVE SUCCESS!!!!







CONCLUSION: In my very limited experience with small boards like the Pine64 or Raspberry Pi, I can't really give much of a valid comparison yet. However, I will say that I REALLY like the Pine64 so far. The unit itself was $24 for the 2gb model, and all-in-all, I think I spent a grand total of around $80 on this entire setup. And that includes two additional power supplies for my other RasPi units and two HDMI-to-DVI and -VGA adapters. The case is large, but it looks very nice. All-in-all, I am VERY pleased with this purchase.

Now the fun begins... what do I make with this thing?