Can you share the purchase link?
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Seems not ready yet. Check pine64 community could help.
“Star64 will be available for purchase to anyone who wants a unit in November. Pricing is yet to be determined”. At a guess it would be from the Pine64 store.
It is November 7, but star64 is not available in Pine64 store
November, could be anywhere from 2022-11-01 to 2022-11-30 (or even 2023-11 if Pine64 wanted to cheat).
We are in the middle of a global electronics supply chain shortage if you bulk order (10k+) parts today you could wait a very long time for it to arrive. Lead Time’s have improved, but some parts to have them for this month November would have had to have been ordered 90+ weeks ago, unless an intermediary supplier has enough stock.
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From the pine64 November update:
“We initially hoped to have Star64 available today but some last minute production issues have pushed the release date back to next month.”
Star64
- Available soon, likely in December before next community update
- Two hardware configurations: 4GB and 8GB of RAM for $69.95 and $89.95 respectively
- Linux at a good starting point with solid early support of most core features of the SoC
- Expect support announcements for the Star64 soon after the board launches
“However, reading this update I’d like you to keep in mind that Chinese factories and logistics are currently experiencing significant restrictions due to the zero-COVID policy. This means that some of the predicted availability dates may change.”
EDIT: The youtube video found on the link above mentions “December 5th”, and that would align well with the EU-based PINE64 online store restock on December 4 and December 9 (Their prices include import duty, VAT and shipping, so would be more).
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From the pine64 December update:
“Star64 launch delayed due to review; striving to make it available before CNY”
" Let me start by writing a few words about Star64. Last month I warned everyone that there is a very real possibility of delays in production of the PineBuds Pro, Ox64 and Star64. While the delays of the PineBuds Pro and Ox64 were relatively minor the delay of the Star64 may be considerably longer. To be clear, the Pine Store is still very intent on releasing the board prior to the Chinese New Year (which starts on January 22) but a firm release date isn’t known as of yet. At this point the board is undergoing an additional review process and, due to various external reasons, it is hard to predict with complete certainty when the review will be finished. I’ll update you on social media when more information is available."
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From the March update:
"Star64
- We expect to have the Star64 available in March or beginning of April
- We had a working demo of Debian with XFCE at FOSDEM (thanks to ayufan)
- There is much interest in RISC-V platform and Star64 in particular
- The software on RISC-V is in early stages – I share my experience
- Star64’s significance: we believe that affordable RISC-V hardware will drive Linux development on the platform
… announcing that Star64 will be available in the next 6 weeks (or so) …
Star64
We were thrilled to be able to demo the Star64 running desktop Linux at FOSDEM. Ayufan, one of our longest-standing contributors whom many of you will recognize from his work on the Pine A64(+), the Rock64, Pinebook Pro and RockPro64 (just to mention a notable few) managed to put together a demo build of Debian with XFCE for our stall. I should also mention that he put the build together in a record time, in about a week, and managed to set it up on-the-spot on the day of the first day of the conference. The demoed build was fairly rudimentary, in terms of both scope and function, but nonetheless it achieved its core goal: it showed off full-blown Linux running on the RISC-V SoC beating at the heart of the Star64. The setup was pretty cool, featuring a 1080p touch panel which worked remarkably well, as well as a more traditional keyboard and mouse input. I’d say that bar the PineTab2 and some of the very popular devices – i.e. the Pinecil V2 and PineTime – the Star64 was one of the most closely scrutinized pieces of hardware at the stall.
People were able to browse the web in Firefox (WiFi works), edit documents in LibreOffice, poke around in the terminal and do a wide-variety of simple desktop-oriented tasks. Many were impressed by the board despite some of the sluggishness caused by software rendering and running the operating system from a SD card, which resulted in long loading times. To many I spoke with, this was the first time they saw Linux running competently on a sub $100 RISC-V development board. I should also mention that the demo ran remarkably stable throughout the two days, with people opening dozens of Firefox tabs, attempting to find and install applications they use (a bit more on this later) and stressing the system. I think that the hacky and cobbled-together build only crashed twice over the course of the two days.
As cool as this is, there isn’t a way to sugarcoat it, and it needs to be said the Linux experience on the platform is in its early stages. Indeed, Linux really is in its infancy on the RISC-V. And I’m not even talking about complicated things, such as driver-work or enablement of some particular kind – I am talking about Firefox not being present in the stock Debian repo and having to be installed in a round-about way or compiled from source. Alas, interacting with the Star64, as cool as it is, reminds me of running Linux on Arm in 2013-2016. It is instantly apparent that much work is still needed for parity to be achieved with other Linux-capable platforms. All this may sound like I am being negative about Star64 or RISC-V but nothing could be further from the truth – let me explain.
For Linux to truly take off and grow on RISC-V there is a need for easily accessible and affordable hardware. Unlike other full-blown SBCs in our stables – most of which can be used by businesses, enthusiasts and regular end-users out-of-the-box – the Star64’s purpose, at least presently, is to lower the entry barrier to obtaining a competent RISC-V development platform. I see it as an important platform for developers already interested in RISC-V wishing to explore the architecture. No matter the product, be it a pie, pencil set or a piece of electronics hardware, there are always three fundamental conditions that need to be satisfied to drive adoption: 1) an existing customer interest or a gap in the market; 2) ability to deliver abundant availability of the product and 3) fair pricing making said product accessible. I think I don’t need to convince you that there is an existing interest in the RISC-V platform already, but what I do want to underline is that we’re committed to Star64 and will strive to make it an amazing value-proposition that anyone can pick up.
Finally, I am happy to let you all know that Star64 has finally completed its review and entered production. I do not have a firm availability date to share just yet, but you can expect units from the initial production run to become available at the end of March or beginning of April. I will, of course, make sure that those of you aching to get their hands on our first RISC-V board get notified of availability."
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From the March Update (released on the 1st of April!):
“Star64 will be available on April 4th in two configurations: 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99 respectively”
" I come bearing great news for everyone waiting for Star64 – the SBC will be available for purchase on April 4th. Due to some last-minute logistics issues we failed to make the March launch date announced in February – our apologies for the slight delay. The boards have now finally been delivered and getting packaged and ready for dispatch. Let me just quickly reiterate the Star64 features: Quad core 64bit RISC-V, HDMI video output, 4x DSI and 4x CSI lates, i2c touch panel connector, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth, as well as 1x native USB3.0 port, 3x shared USB2.0 ports, PCIe x1 open-ended slot and GPIO bus pins (i2c, SPI and UART). The board also features 128M QSPI flash and eMMC and microSD card slots. The board will be available in two different RAM configurations – with 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99 respectively. The Star64 store page ought to already be live when you read this, but will be listed as out of stock until the 4th."
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