BananaPi?

Spotted this on the GadgetShow site: http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-show/gadget-news/getting-fruity-banana-pi-raspberry-pi-clone-mini-pc-boasts-faster-cpu-and-doubles-memory-for-under-35 and www.banana-pi.org

A Raspberry Pi alike (using an Allwinner A20) with SATA and GigE built-in – sounds good.
Alas, no sign of schematics or data sheets. :/

A prospective target for some superpowered RISC OS?

A prospective target for some superpowered RISC OS?

Rather unlikely, because:

Alas, no sign of schematics or data sheets. :/

This seems to be the case for anything associated with the Allwinner chips. Look for boards where extensive datasheets are available and you don’t fall at the first hurdle. Of course there are other hurdles…

The OMAP chip in the Pandaboard has a reputation for good documentation. Given the effort (nearly a year) it took to get some of the documents and I still haven’t been able to get yet some of the documents Willi wants, I hate to think what would be required to get the necessary info on the A20.
The strange thing is I’ve never been told I can’t have the OMAP documents. It’s been convincing people that there are full datasheets, finding the right people who can authorise release and then getting hold of the NDAs to sign!

There’s some information on this site that the Banana Pi runs “Rasberry Pi Image” and there is a shot of a screen here (towards the bottom of the page). Does this have any implications for RISC OS?

I can’t see how it can run the same image if it has different hardware (it also mentions the cubieboard too.)

Perhaps it uses the same loading system, so a system could be made that works on either board.

But if the hardware is a secret then it won’t be any help to RISC OS.

Sorry for resurrecting an 8 years old thread, but I was interested in running RISC OS on Banana.
From what I see they stated their designs are open-source: https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Main_Page
(„Banana Pi is an open source hardware project lead by GuangDong BiPai technology co., LTD. It focuses on the open source hardware development board of ARM and MCU series, provides open software and hardware platform, and creates the basic technology development platform. Full series open source hardware products…” etc.)
Also Allwinner docs seem to be available: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents

Does it change anything regarding the subject „RISC OS on Banana Pi” (hoperfully for the better)?

Yes, no, maybe, probably not. The Banana Pi BPI-M64 (from 2016!) uses the same chip as the Pinebook, so it might be possible to get something running on that specific 🍌, but unlike the Pi family it looks like the bananas use all sorts of SoCs – Realtek, Mediatek, Amlogic… which means they’ll all need different builds of RISC OS.

The next problem is finding somebody to do the port, which requires a fairly deep level of knowledge.

That the processor documentation is now available is good, but I can’t help but feel it’s way too late. That stuff should have been there from the beginning, really.

Maybe it could be possible to make it subject of next „Google summer of code” — or to encourage some company to grant a „bounty” (e.g. ARM themselves)?
IMHO Banana Pi and Orange Pi deserve their „ports”. The simplest Banana Pi BPI-M1 has SATA port, which SBC-s seldom feature, and Orange Pi 800, being full-featured computer, is a real competitor for RPi 400.