Interesting information that new HW version is in progress!
Maybe would You like to consider SFP connector on board?
There would be extra passive switch for SATA0/SGMII port like this:
and SFP connector, thats all! Eventually jumper for choosing SFP/SATA.
Thank you for announcing this interesting piece of hardware. Are you going to release an official case for the board as well? A BPI-R2-like with one or two 2.5-inch HDD slots would be really nice!
not sure about 12V line in SATA, but you need to consider HDD power consumption.
I remember having hard time booting on standard 12V 2A power supply - 2x 2.5’’ HDD.
Booting started normally, went through all inits. Spinup HDDs … reboot.
It boots just fine when used 12V 3.4A supply (or 2A supply + extra smartphone charger on usb-c).
from sheet I googled for reference just now:
you might have same issue when trying single 3.5’’ HDD
by the way - this is my drive spec to complete this answer:
I currently use a GnuBee PC2 with 6x IronWolf 2T drives powered from a 12V@10A brick. It has issues if I have all 6 plugged in at poweron, but runs fine with all 6 after the first 5 spin up. According to Seagate’s datasheet https://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/ironwolf/files/ironwolf-pro-ds1914-3-1701gb.pdf they pull 2A (24W) each on startup, but run less than 8W (<1A) after started.
I really just want a SBC that plugs directly into a 3.5" drive (12V) and ethernet, ideally with PoE so there’s only a single cable. A literal network attached storage. I’d be ecstatic if the SoC could handle ZFS for a large TB drive and still run some services, but I’d still be happy with an energy-efficient potato SoC. Sadly, it seems there is currently no such SBC on the market.