A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I ported Minix, a teaching OS based on public domain Unix, from Atari ST (which I didn’t have) to a 68000-based system that I did have. Eventually, Linus added features to it and released it as Linux. I’ve been familiar with it for a while… 🙂

Most recently, I spent WAY TOO much time but finally got Ubuntu 23.10.1-Desktop working on a Microsoft Surface Pro 6. My friends and family suggested that I just give up since it was mostly not working (wouldn’t boot except from a live-USB). I didn’t want to be beaten by it, so I persevered and it’s now working though I haven’t put in the special drivers for the touchscreen yet.

I do have WSJT-X working on it and it works exactly as it does on Windows, so it’s fun and give more machines that I can use to make FT8 contacts.

Something about the simplicity and general cleanliness of Linux keeps bringing me back…

Having “halfway bricked” a Sino:bit, I went through a lot of searches to find the software necessary to bring it back to normal life.  By “halfway bricked” I mean that the Sino:bit could no longer load programs and run them because the normal “user”-level bootloader had been corrupted.

The Sino:bit uses DAPLink at two levels; at the lowest level DAPLink provides the capability to load a new operating system onto the board.  At the OS level it provides drivers and support for Sino:bit programs written in JavaScript via the graphical interface such as the one used for Micro:bit or files developed using the Arduino IDE.  The corruption of the second level meant that my board could show up in “MAINTENANCE” mode but couldn’t load normal, user programs.

In the end I discovered that a microUSB problem, either a series of bad/inadequate cables, or a flaky connector on the board had been the source of my problems.  Finding a better cable with a stable connection allowed me to reprogram the DAPLink software and the board was back to normal.

Feeling brave because I could now restore the board if I messed it up, I loaded the latest version (0.0.2) of microPython onto the board to check it out; it worked fine!  Also, having recovered the one board, I was now willing to risk the second board and so I programmed it using the Arduino IDE with Sino:bit libraries.  I also programmed the microPython board using some example code and all worked fine.

A few observations in case you start working with Sino:bit:

• It is a really nice board, especially with the large array of LEDs
• The source for up-to-date info is github.com//sinobitorg
• DAPLink is located at github.com/ARMmbed/DAPLink
• Check out: https://os.mbed.com/blog/entry/DAPLink-bootloader-update/ if you want more information about how DAPLink works and how to tell if your board is bricked…
• MicroPython is released here:  https://github.com/tdicola/sinobit-micropython/releases
• The online microPython is available here: https://tdicola.github.io/sinobit-micropython/editor/editor.html

My hope is that you jump right into enjoying the board and don’t end up chasing a lot of weird problems.  🙂