@Bill Kreutz Glad to hear it. We have the next round of boards getting ready to come in and our customers are anxious to get these, plus we are testing the expansion board prototypes, so I don't see us having time to document this in the near term. If you do get what you want working, I hope that you would return to this forum to share what you've done with others. Thank you, Bill!

I updated the FAQ to include the missing instructions. You can see those instructions at the end of this FAQ entry: https://www.axzez.com/forum/interceptor-carrier-board/frequently-asked-questions#viewer-126kf

Understood @Bill Kreutz. So, have you worked through that now and are good?

Hi @Bill Kreutz. I think the instructions you are looking for are here: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/linux_kernel.html#getting-your-code-into-the-kernel Our patch is here (based on Kernel version 5.10.63): https://www.axzez.com/software-downloads

Great news! Glad you figured it out and are up and running, Bill. My co-founder mentioned that he too had some issues with using the Raspberry Pi Imager in the past, so you are not alone.

Bill, btw, we certainly appreciate that you will do a blog write-up on the Interceptor board. Thank you very much for that!

Bill, Not at all (we didn't feel like you put us on blast). We just thought you were asking a guy with experience :). No apology necessary. So, whether you have the USB flash drive inserted or not, you still get no output at all to HDMI0 or HDMI1 when you turn the PSU on, but you do see activity (RJ-45 lights blinking). There is no Pi boot screen at all either? Do you happen to know what bootloader version you are on? In order for the USB boot to work, you must be at Raspberry Pi bootloader version 2020-12-14 or newer. We address this in our FAQ with the question: "Q. Is there a minimum CM4 bootloader version required...". Would you please check that first before we move forward?

Thanks for the update, Bill. Glad to hear you are making progress. We look forward to hearing how things go. We'll be right here to respond if needed.

Also, please be sure to follow our OS imager installation process here: https://www.axzez.com/forum/interceptor-carrier-board/frequently-asked-questions (second question in Software section). We have not tested writing our imager directly to the CM4 board. Our imager is meant to be written to a USB flash drive and the inserted into the Interceptor board for installation. Do you at least see the Raspberry Pi boot splash screen? Similar to, but not exactly this: If you don't even see this, then you are not getting power to the CM4, in which case I would think this is a PSU issue.

Hello @Bill Kreutz. The first thing we would need to do is ensure the +3.3V being supplied by the PSU is reliable. You will need to have a DMM to test this. Stick the positive probe into the ATX connector in the bottom right-hand corner, closest to the last SATA connector. It should look similar to this: Then ground the negative probe. Set the DMM to measure DC voltage. When the PSU is powered on, it should consistently read +3.30V (minor .01 fluctuations are fine). If it it drops too low (usually below +2.5V, but this varies), the under power protection of the PSU can shut the PSU down. We talk more about this in the Hardware section of the Interceptor FAQ forum page: https://www.axzez.com/forum/interceptor-carrier-board/frequently-asked-questions

Hello @remziakyuz. The CM4 has only one PCIe lane and we have it dedicated to SATA. We are using the JMB585 PCIe to SATA controller, so the limitation is on the CM4 PCIe performance in this case.

Hello @mplaskett58. You can get a CM4 board here: https://www.seeedstudio.com/Raspberry-Pi-Compute-Module-CM4102032-p-4721.html at normal price. They currently only have the one option (it's a pretty good option), and you can only buy one CM4 board at a time, but at least they have stock.

It should be fine. We have found that anything Seasonic that we've tested has a very dependable +3.3v rail, even the cheapest Seasonic model we tested. The interesting thing about that cheapest model we tested is that it is supposedly not manufactured by Seasonic (they typically manufacture all of their PSUs). It appears that even if they outsource manufacturing that they still demand high quality. I cannot guarantee the model you shared will work, but it's a pretty safe bet it would be good based on their reputation and track record.

We do use the +3.3v rail specifically, which is why we ran into issues with PSUs that do not have a reliable +3.3v rail (see the Interceptor FAQ for more information). We also use the +5v and +12v rails where applicable.

I think the post on the RJ-45 ports in our Interceptor FAQ can be helpful here: https://www.axzez.com/forum/interceptor-carrier-board/frequently-asked-questions 1. Port A (bottom left) is the WAN port. Gets its IP from your network. Ports B-D are LAN and are assigned an IP by the Interceptor Board OS (provided by us). This allows our board to function as a managed switch. 2. Dimensions of the board are 110mm x 100mm. I'll update this post later with something to answer your request for dwg, but do note that we are providing a Mini ITX adapter for the board so that the Interceptor Carrier Board can be installed into almost any case. We are also looking to provide a 1U case at some point. 3. For the power supply, we do document some verified PSUs in our Interceptor FAQ here (see hardware section, question 2). There are some PSUs that we've tested that did not have a reliable +3.3v rail. Some of these will not work and the others we ask that you do not use. If you have a DMM and can verify that +3.3v rail of your PSU is stable with any load, you are good. 4, We may provide a manual at some point, but for now we are providing an insert with each board and our FAQ entry for the Interceptor Carrier Board is intended to answer all user questions.

If the board is powered on and power loss is experienced, when power is restored the device boots back into the OS. The power-on button header provided by Axzez allows you to power-up the device after you have chosen to shutdown the device, leaving the power supply still in the on position.

There are no plans to change the number of ethernet ports or add wifi-6 in this generation.

I just added support for shipping to Germany. Enjoy!

@bwbloom Good question. You should be able to use hdparm to set the drive to power up in standby. Then, when a drive is first accessed, it should spin up automatically. Update I: it will also require that we implement this patch, which we have added to our to-do list. Update II: the patch has been integrated into our latest Axzez provided OS. You should now be able to configure staggered drive spin-up in most cases.

@bwbloom Thank you. We are based on Raspbian + drivers that are not mainlined yet + the compositor. We are currently looking at integrating ZFS.