I wish I had know about the Pine 64! I ended up buying an ODROID-C2 (http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php) when looking for an AArch64 board, which is pretty similar.
Re:Exploring AArch64 assembler
by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @07:48PM
(#12680744)
I think you're better off with the Odroid and it's Amlogic CPU - the Pine 64 has an Allwinner CPU. You'll have fewer headaches getting kernels to build for and run on the Amlogic chip.
shame it's an allwinner SoC, they seem to have a history of GPL problems and binary blobs.
Except from HDMI almost everything is open or reverse engineered.
To me it was sill more attractive than the Ordroid-U3 with its Samsung chip, which boots only signed software and is totally undocumented. Same with the PI3 and its GPU code, which is needed to boot.
[1] https://www.pine64.org/ (I'm not related to Pine, just a satisfied user)