There are so many Allwinner H3 SBCs or development boards that new ones are often uninteresting, but with the release of Linux 5.0, I discovered a new board that I had never heard of: MapleBoard MP130.
The board is equipped with 1GB RAM, Fast Ethernet, four USB ports, and various I/O expansion headers. But the form factor looked familiar, and it seems compliant with 96Boards CE Extended, except for some reasons they decided to swap the low speed and high speed connectors, so I doubt the board is compatible with any of the 96Boards mezzanines.
MapleBoard MP130 specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Arm Cortex-A7 processor at up to 1.3GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 1GB DDR3L 1600 MHz
- Storage – 8GB eMMC 4.41 flash, microSD slot
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output with HDCP1.2
- Connectivity – 10/100Mbps Ethernet
- Audio
- 2-ch 92dB ADC, 2-ch 100dB DAC, I2S/PCM Interface, 32-bit 8KHz ~ 192KHz
- Input – Stereo line-in phone jack
- Output – Stereo line-out phone jack
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB port (device only)
- Expansion via 96Boards style 40-pin low speed (LS) connector and 60-pin high speed (HS) connector:
- 3x UART, 2x I2C, SPI
- 2x I2S/PCM
- 1x SDIO V2.0 port
- 8-bit CSI camera interface
- 24x GPIO
- 1x IR receiver
- Debug – 3-pin UART header + 5V-pin
- Misc – Power ON / OFF LED, 2x status LED’s; Power, Reset, User buttons; U-boot jumper
- Power Supply – 5V/3A via power barrel jack
- Dimensions – 100 x 85 mm (same as 96Boards CE Extended) x 18 mm
- Weight – 58 grams
The diagram above probably already gives a clue that the board mostly targets the Chinese market (actually Taiwan), and indeed the product page and hardware/software documentation are mostly in Chinese language.
One person from the UK did manage to get an “Economy Edition” of the board (aka MP130-1) without the HS connector, HDMI port, nor the 3.5mm audio jacks, and he/she found the board was running Debian Stretch. Linux 5.0-rc1 was successfully tested on the board, but since HDMI was not present on this version of the board, video output could not be tested.
I was unable to find the price or place to purchase the board from Taiwan. The MP130-1 board sells for about $32 in Taiwan, see pinned comment below.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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This board sell for 955 NTD (32 USD) on PCHOME
https://24h.pchome.com.tw/prod/DSAJ2B-A9009383P
Thank you!
Ah yes, these guys. Not their first board. Their website is a total mess though. Good luck finding what you need there…
Is it real problem to port Linux 5 to other h3 boards? Maybe except so rare onboard components, but video output, flash support, other base hardware could have support in mainline. Am I wrong?
Not really a problem, just a matter of developer costs.
Linux 5.0 is not LTS though, so a bit pointless to port.
Not every stuff already landed in mainline but patches are floating around and are even collected nicely: https://github.com/armbian/build/tree/master/patch/kernel/sunxi-next — after some minor DT adjustments the above board will run a 4.19 (LTS) kernel and stuff like HDMI that might still need some time with mainline will already work. After all it’s just another boring H3 thingy.
The blog is what I love most about this board. There are movie reviews, personal life thoughts, traveling pictures. Just found a new world 🙂