I wrote this guide because after getting my CubieBoard 1 I followed the Arch Linux ARM instructions and was suprised to be left with a system that albeit working, had missing RAM and no fbconsole at all.
This guide gets Arch Linux ARM into your 1GB Cubieboard 1 with the minimum functionality one would expect. It is not intended to be an all encompassing document, focusing instead on saving your time having to read through the forum to get functionality that otherwise every other Linux distribution brings out of box.
You will have to adjust these instructions if you have a 512M Cubieboard.
At a minimum, you need to create the first partition on an SD card to store the bootloader files and kernel uImage. For the root filesystem you can choose to use either a second partition on the SD card, USB or SATA. This guide however only covers SD. Replace instances of /dev/mmcblkX with the appropriate device name registered on your system.