I think we're both "veterans" in computing and, if anything, I love the fact that I never cease to be amazed by the ever increasing power and smaller sizes of computing devices. Up to a few years before 1992, the first computer that I used to connect to BBSes and then the Internet was a Commodore Amiga - for dial up Internet it was an Amiga A1200 running at 14 MHz with 8 GB RAM using the "iBrowse" web browser. One of my favourite PCs (as a Thinkpad-collecting Linux bloke) is a Thinkpad T22 from around 2002 (a decade after the A1200) that has a Pentium III CPU running at 700 MHz and 512 MB RAM - so 50 times the CPU speed and 64 times the ram of that Amiga A1200, and that was 22 years ago! I didn't own the T22 from new, I bought it in a pile of broken laptops from "everyone's favourite auction site", repaired it and now I use it once or twice a week to program shell scripts on my server via SSH as it has a great keyboard and is a "long lost" way of doing distraction-free computing. I'm very lucky to have "the childlike eyes" of an old computing bloke who has never forgotten the importance of the word "perspective". And I find it utterly shocking (but in a nice way) that I can pick up a used HP, Lenovo or Dell SFF PC with a third or fourth generation Core i5 or i7 CPU and 8 GB RAM on "that auction site" for less money than I'd spend going out for a Chinese meal of an evening - any one of which makes a fine platform for Linux or BSD as a daily driver. At the same time, it's saddening to see people rushing like lemmings into immediate upgrade mode just because Microsoft has churned out another Windows version or some greedy company has churned out another buggy and derivative "game as a service" without even understanding why they're doing it - albeit I can snap up their old hardware cheaply when they get rid of it. Thanks for the effort you put into your content too - I'm still very much a Linux bloke but do have a few BSD systems kicking around as well.

I'm right there with you, mate.

Thanks for your support, and so very true. :)

No background music means viewers can pick their own :P

@@CnCDune I agree with the OP on the no music. I play guitar while I watch these videos and have to stop the video if there is music playing.

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To be honest, it is rather exhilarating.

😏🤭

Oh my!? ..the innuendos 😀 This is about HW, good sir 😛

I swear I could see 👁the photons☢ as soon as he connected!🤯

Yes, if it was possible to actually use it. Try searching online and you'll find lots of questions "how to use it" and no answers.

A working operating system is an even bigger plus.

Pin out diagram would help, and more than likely you'll have to add it then "address" it in the code.

@@ominguti6345 im petty sure you need to add an overlay for it, but i dont know if there is one already created or not. OR if there is a option inside "orangepi-config", i would look in there first.

BBS's? You still running dialup?? Dalnet is dead.

@@loginregional I missed BBS, the UK had nowhere near the same scene as the US. We had Cefax =), did love the BBS ANSI art tho. Localized mesh networks with no gateways, gatekeepers or bills could be quite useful and fun. Long Range Radio can't handle much by today's standard, but olde world BBS on the other hand. Right I'm off for a game of Legend of the Red Dragon

That's actually a good idea for a video. Perhaps Chris can do a video on peer-to-peer LoRa mesh networking. As for the other commentators, they apparently don't understand the bandwidth constraints of a LoRa network. BBS makes sense for such a network.

The cool kids were doing peer to peer LoRA four years ago!

@@sUASNews And they are back at it again because of all of the political instability these days.

Dealt with the same issue myself.

Thanks. :)

One day they will be able to make the circuitry so small, that the connectors will be the thing that limit's the size! "Where is the processor and all that"? "It's under the USB connector".😁

Sounds good to me! 👍

Thanks 👍

Many thanks. :)

The age of the official distro is disappointing, for sure. I've had success with the DietPi for this board. I use it to run a Snapclient for a multi-room audio setup. The added antenna makes for great connectivity compared to the vanilla Pi Zeros I have running in other rooms.

Stanley the Knife must be banged up yet again ... if only he could stay out of trouble.

I would ordinarily use Mr Teeth for a job like this.

Mr. Scissors in vital bag opening drama! Stanley the Knife is jealous! 😎

The naming of the Orange Pi boards confuses me! The Zero 2W specs are very much like the Zero 3 as you say, so why is this new board not a Zero 3W?

What a good pair of scissors!

:)

Are there actually any non-pi SBCs with GPU drivers? They always advertise them in the specs but then neglect to tell you there's no way to use them...

The GPU can be enabled by editing the settings at the dtb

It's really easy to enable the GPU, just open orangepi-config.

He always returns . . . eventually! :)

It's Linux, an operating system with no limits. The only limits are defined by how good you are in building it to do what you want. If you're always reliant on (probably rushed) Linux builds provided with the boards themselves by the vendor, then what do you expect? It's your expectation of what a tiny board can do and should be able to do that is unrealistic. What do you mean by "Prime Time" when these are "hobbyist" boards anyway?

Plus one for Mr Scissors, I'm looking forward to when Chris gets Sid the soldering iron out to get those pesky GPIO pins in place

Microcontrollers are based on 32bits logics and monocores. Those SBCs are 64bits and multicores. 😊

@@chryoko The RP2040 processor on the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller is 32bit, yes, but dual core, not monocore.

The scammers have certainly gotten bad in recent times!

Why do they need to go "mainstream" when they are "hobbyist" boards? You're getting confused with the "anomaly" that is the Raspberry Pi as the single range of SBCs that have a huge amount of support and a large community to turn them into "near consumer" devices - because anything that you, as a newbie, could want to do with a Raspberry Pi will have a YT video or a web site article to follow for you to do it. But these boards were not initially released to be retro gaming platforms or desktop PCs - they were aimed at industrial applications and giving school kids cheap computers on which to learn programming. Sure, the "market" has dictated other uses for these boards since then (like retro gaming and desktop replacements) and that, in turn, has driven advancement in CPU power and memory on these boards - but most industrial applications or kids writing in programs in Scratch don't really need much beyond the original Raspberry Pi boards released back in 2012.

@@terrydaktyllus1320 While much of what you say is true, I definitely wouldn't put you in charge of marketing.

@@j_h_o I am an engineer and a "techie" and I have been for more than 40 years - I programmed my first computer in assembly language back in 1982 and I have had "the computer bug" ever since, both as a hobby and in my work. So, yes, I wouldn't put me in charge of marketing either - I'd be bored senseless within minutes and it's why I deliberately avoid sales meetings and events at work because there is no situation more hideous for me that being in the company of a group of drunk sales and marketing people.

additional to the OS, i thought i saw it when you opened the task manager it popped up and then went to monitor sleep mode. is it possible to mess around with the the power saving for the HDMI? might keep the screen on. Again rewatched the video... android with GPIO access is pretty useful!! suspect something wrong? boot to the android and test!

Am struggling with having wiringOp-Python to work!Is it working on yours?And if yes..Are you willing to help please?

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Then build your own OS. You can start by learning how to build Armbian the way you want to or, as I do, teach yourself have to build Gentoo Linux across many different platforms and even build the kernel the way that you want to. These aren't consumer devices, they are hobbyist boards - you get the best out of them by learning to do a bit of "DIY" on them.

@@terrydaktyllus1320 Thanks for the recommendation! I'd love to customise my own OS with my own kernel!

@@gloiloidn5752 Good luck! There is a very steep learning curve to overcome with Gentoo Linux but the rewards come later when you start to be able to make use of its power. I started using it back in 2003 and it is still my main OS to this day - but then I am an incessant tweaker!