I placed an order recently for a Milk-V Mars 8 GB from Arace Tech. I don’t believe it comes with any eMMC (at least the item description didn’t mention it.) I read on a Vision Five forum that someone used a OrangePi 256GB eMMC module for the VF2. Does anyone have any tips on buying eMMC for the Mars? Are there different size eMMC slots? Is the Mars eMMC slot the only size? I was also considering buying a m.2 SATA SSD and putting it in an enclosure, and connecting it to the Mars via USB 3.0.
The orange pi slots have 2 connectors and the Mars only has one. I tried a cheap emmc with one connector from aliexpress that had the same connector as mars. The system does recognise the emmc but I’m unable to write anything to it. I may have a bad emmc and I’m in the process of seeing if I can get a replacement from ali express.
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All eMMC modules that can be used on VF2 can be used on Mars. Although Mars only has one card slot, its size and pin definition are the same as the eMMC connector of VF2. The card slot on the other side is only for support and is not retained on Mars.
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Thanks for the information. I see on the GitHub there are images for SD card and eMMC. Is it ever possible to boot from a USB connected hard drive? I’ve received my Mars and was planning on starting by using a micro SD card, then once I got things running, I hoped to install Linux on the USB connected drive. Is this possible? Also, if I wanted to get an eMMC module that would work (as you said, that also would work with VF2), how do I find these?
Unfortunately, Mars does not support booting the system from a USB drive.
About the eMMC, you can buy from distributor Arace:
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Thanks for the information. Would it be possible to use the ln command to link / (on the SD) to a directory on the USB drive? (After copying / /bin /usr etc. to th directory on the USB drive?) In that way, I would need both the SD and USB drive to boot.
I have a couple of EMMC cards that I got from the Pine64 store. Are they compatible with the Mars? They seem to use the same single Hirose connector though I don’t know if they are electrically compatible.
I used the EMMC-USB dongle they provide to burn Pine64 images onto it.