SD Cards supported, and image sizes.

[Olaf]

Some feedback that will help potential buyers to order a a parallella.
If it was only a $35 card, then I would just buy it, but a $99 and higher card, lack of information means NO-GO.

On the main page: https://www.parallella.org/ I notice that "Micro-SD storage"
But it does not state if it supports <32 GB SD or >32 SD. No where in the documentation I see if it can support >32 GB SD cards.

It is important to know because : http://www.parallella.org/create-sdcard/
I get to create an image ubuntu-14.04-hdmi-z7010-20140611.img.gz (June 11, 2014, 2.1GB)

The fact that is shows "2.1GB" Gives me the impression that it would fit on a 8 GB and a 16 GB SD card but it fails to install on a 16 GB SD card.
I went for a 32 GB but the shop either had only 16 GB or 64GB. So I bought the 16GB only to discover that it did not fit on that card.

It would be nice that:
"ubuntu-14.04-hdmi-z7010-20140611.img.gz (June 11, 2014, 2.1GB)"
would be
"ubuntu-14.04-hdmi-z7010-20140611.img.gz (June 11, 2014, 2.1GB, 32 GB required)"

[6thimage]

[Olaf]

[6thimage]

[glamprecht]

I am currently running Kingston Class 10 uSD 64 GB (SDXC). Hope this is sufficient for you.

This is not a "Hobbyist" product. It is an "Enthusiast" product. If using it is too steep learning curve then most other Single Board Linux Computers would be too hard as well. You need to appreciate that more than 90% of the "learning" you will be doing will not be Parallella, it would be Linux and uP. Of the remaining 10%, about 9% of it would be the Zynq processor. Other than that it is very straight forward.

You are right that it is hard to find uses for so many processor cores. It is a novel product and that attract attention. Then I must add that I cannot see why with very good programming you need more than 100MHz processor and more than one core - to entertain and help humans. Sorry but I come from the ZX Spectrum 16k era where there were no GPU and only 4MHz of processing delivering excellent full colour entertainment.

There are some uses that makes sense, but they are not Hobbyist kind of uses.

[sebraa]

You cannot copy the .img.gz file onto the SD card directly. You need to decompress it first.

The current images fit on a 4 GB card. On bigger cards, only the first 4 GB will be used (unless you re-partition manually).