Kobol Helios64

The default.nix module provides the required setup for the system to work.

The recommended.nix module adds recommended settings for the system.

Status

Works

SATA hard drives
Ethernet (1gbps)
Serial through USB type-c (ttyS2)

Untested

Ethernet (2.5gbps)
DP video out
UPS behaviour
rootfs on SATA drives

Disabled

Due to misbehaviour, ttyS0 (&uart0, serial@ff180000) has been disabled via a kernel patch.

Without this change, using, or attempting to use ttyS0 will break serial output from ttyS2.

Kernel

Only Linux 5.10 (LTS) is supported, using the patch set derived from Armbian.

Requirements

A platform firmware needs to be provided out of band for the system.

The author recommends Tow-Boot, for which a draft pull request adds support for the Helios64.

Any other supported platform firmware should work too.

Note

: at the time of writing (2021-10-10) the platform firmware must make use of the proprietary ram training. The open source equivalent will make the system unstable, and worse, will cause silent memory corruption, in addition to loud memory corruption.

Notes

Baud rate

The serial baud rate is configured for 115200, which is a more common default than the usual for Rockchip at 1500000. See the rationale for the decision.