esp8266hints

Updated July 8th 2026 — Well that didn’t last long!

Again, something that isn’t directly ESP8266/32 connected, but interesting non the less.

Note to self:- Must get into the habit of re-installing the bootstrap loader when doing upgrades (will be happier in the end).

In the first part of this series, we looked at accessing our LuckFox Pico Pro using an RDNIS network connection over the USB port to connect with the minimal “busybox” Linux shipped from the factory.

I’ve been diving down multiple rabbit holes recently with Linux on really tiny SBCs.

My search for a “daily steal” this week has been influenced by the thought that I’d quite like to upgrade the backbone network in the old, ancestral home to 2.5GbE.

I came across today’s choice while idly meandering the less-travelled passageways of Mr Baba’s emporium looking for an ESP32-S3 board on which to run Linux, but got side-tracked when I noticed that the older B-Max N3350 (Apollo Lake) machines were now down

Have you ever wondered what that column header, “EXPANDSZ”, in the zpool list command actually refers to, or why it is always empty?

Update Aug 20th 2023 — This board, as well as the additional Ethernet RJ45 PCB, is now available from the SpotPear Electronics shop on Aliexpress (as usual, this is for your information only, not an endorsement of the Milk-V Duo or of SpotPear).

This is just a brain-dump of the information I’ve gleaned so far while trying to load Linux onto one of these boards.