Well, that was fun. Got that fixed, ended up having to rebuild the boot loader from the OEM sources.  Not hard to fix but still damned annoying they are so sloppy and don't give a flying F that they 'hurt' peoples hardware.

But, while getting the file link on their page i happened to notice the current prices..  its now over 200 bucks, for a 8 gb RK SBC.. even before tariffs..   Man this chip eating machine of the AI data-centers really needs to be stopped.

Sat May 30 2026 20:47:45 EDT from Nurb432

Not sorted this out yet, but seems if you install Armbian on several models of SBC, you can no longer boot the OEM SD cards.. you are basically trapped forever.. After some searching, a few people have had the same issue, and their response " not our problem ".  Not real sure what the hell they did, but even trying to do a factory reload to get the proper boot loader back, fails.

Wanted to build a backup router out of one of my RK boards, and it has 3 Ethernet ports for this reason... so got the latest vendor supplied OpenWRT installer, and it would not even boot... i put Armbian on it long ago to play with it a little, with the intent to do this very thing later on.  grumble.  

No, not a fan of either company, but,its the only game in town.  Who is going to step up and buy me one of these desktop machines.  Only be around 200k.    ( currently the high-end NVIDIA hardware + nearly 800gb shared ram )

Now, joking aside, NVIDIA is making their own desktops ( and way over priced IoT devices ) with this stuff..  And while they are making the underlying core chips for both, and i get that Dell has a larger market, it just seems odd they would have Dell make their own version, instead of just selling a re-banded version of theirs

https://www.techradar.com/pro/hp-announces-the-most-powerful-windows-ai-pc-ever-built-nvidia-gb300-workstation-can-handle-one-trillion-parameters-thanks-to-its-784gb-unified-memory-but-it-wont-be-cheap

Well, that is neat. My "desktop" ( its a mini box, but not NUC sized..somewhere in the middle, thus quotes ) decided that on boot yesterday: "Your CPU fan is not connected or has failed". Yet it was spinning at a normal speed.  Since it was still going, decided to boot anyway. Then it kicked on 100%..  Really? Clearly its not "Dead". Stupid machine.  

A day later, nope, too much freaking noise. Move the drive to the one spare i kept while i wait for a new fan to show. ( the rest are long gone from the last purge, but kept one buried in the closet, 'just in case', as i still need something to do 'office work' with on the few days im still 'there', and didn't want to be stuck using my tablet, even if it does have usbC and supports 2 extenral monitors via it. ) 

SanDisk. New 8TB SSD, m.2        .....      nearly 4000 dollars retail.

This DataCenter madness needs to stop. By force if necessary.  They are killing the planet, AND about to destroy the economy since nearly everything is now tied to stupid digital crap.

FPGA is gate level.  This is board level.

Thu Jun 18 2026 20:11:11 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

conductive liquid to create PCB tracks, in effect, without
'printing/etching' ..  "Field Programmable Circuit Boards"  

Sounds neat, but how is that different from an FPGA?

FPGAs wont do 'everything', like anything else digital, they need support components, and components to take up the slack for what they cant do.   ( i could take a picture of one of mine.. )

But, i still don't see a point for this beyond prototyping. Save one from doing breadboards, or endless etching " version 24 is done! ".   But regardless of how cool, its still WAY over kill for that i think, but is damned cool :).

Fri Jul 24 2026 17:07:29 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

No, I get that; what I'm curious about is why you would *use* such a thing instead of an FPGA.

For my purposes - recreating very authentic simulations of classic 8 and 16 bit, and maybe early 32 bit platforms - FPGA is literally a magic bullet. I have all the real hardware - I use FPGA 99% of the time because it is so cycle accurate you can't tell. There are no stutters, no lag, no glitches or incompatibilities (other than those that existed between different generations at the time)... compared to software emulation... FPGA is just f'kin incredible. 

But beyond that - beyond say - PS/1 - I could GAF. So... FPGA has unlimited potential to deliver platform authentic experience at a hardware level that software emulation can't quite match. I'm out of cycle right now - but last time I was current a MiSTer FPGA could deliver up to about a 486SX25 running Windows 3.11 and games would run reasonably. I finished MYST on it from a mounted CD ISO image. 

That is some 1994 tech there - on a box about as big as 3 packs of cigarettes. 


For me... magic. 

Then there is my Vampire V4 Stand Alone Amiga. My C=128 has a 1541+ FPGA emulated disk drive plugged into it. FPGA just does all the things *I* want. 

And does it so well. 

And that's pretty awesome.  Re-creating vintage hardware using nothing but an FPGA sounds like a great way to simulate the entire chain, right down to the analog video output.

But I really am more curious about the other 99% of FPGA's out there, and what advantages a field programmable circuit board would convey.  Typically when an FPGA is used in a finished product, it's one of two situations:

1. The product isn't going to sell enough units to justify the development and manufacture of an ASIC
2. Specs for the application are a moving target and the manufacturer expects to have to update it in the field later

For example I remember opening up a 56K DSU/CSU back in the mid 1990s, expecting to find all sorts of fun.  The whole thing was just a Xilinx FPGA attached to a bunch of line drivers.  And I thought, oh look at that, the entire logic subsystem is basically burned into that gate array.   But I can't imagine any reason one would want to change the board itself because it's just passive components.

And that is why I am still scratching my head trying to think of any application for a field programmable circuit board.