I've own 2 Banana Pi's for the past year and not using them was not a smart move on my part.You know how it goes - life gets in the way when you're busy making other plans.
 
I thought I had Raspbian for the Banana Pi downloaded somewhere on my laptops. But I can not find it. (the file name is Raspbian for Bananana Pi, and its nowhere to be found!) But I did have a Bananian - a Banana Pi Port of Raspbian. Unfortunately it is not complete. It does not have the X-Windows Library or system on it, it is just a text console to the Debian Linux System. You can install a GUI to it and many other apps to it as well, but for an educational system, I have to say that this is more towards a college level Comp Sci studies than Jr. High or High School Level.  
 
I this because Jr High and High School need to have programs and apps already installed and running where on the college level is more towards programming on a raw system. Thus I can see what the Chinese Educational System was doing here with the Banana Pi and Raspberry Pi - the Raspberry Pi went to the lower Jr. High and High Grades and the Banana Pi went to the College level. At least Bananian showed me a lot of stuff.
 
First off - it uses the AllWinner A20 Chipset; other than it being a Dual Core CPU and 1GB of RAM which the OS verified during Boot. The Raspberry Pi uses the Cortex (sic.) A7/A20 CPUs. The only difference is in the Graphics Chip, the ARM CPU and related I/O inside are the same. But this is important - especially on that part of the world. The US and parts of Europe are still on Intel/Windows Based Laptops. Asia has moved onto the ARM/Android Based Tablets. Microsoft failed in seeing this and are lagging behind greatly in the tablet software/os market.
 
Cortex, Rocket, AllWinner and several other ARM-based CPUs are all used in Tablets, with the exception of the iPad by Apple. Apple uses the ARM-CPU but with a different design to its I/O, a modified A8 / A9 ARM CPU made for them by Samsung. Side Note: Apple has been using the ARM CPU with the first iPods, and from the iTouch 3 & 4, started using Arm's A4, A5, A6, A7, etc, made by Samsung as per their modificiations and designs. So the iPods, iTouch and iPads use the same or similar CPUs used in the Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi and other Small System boards, their I/O is heavily modified and not hardware compatible to the others though one can take original source code made for the Android systems and compile it for the iPads with minimal modifications. Apple Modified ARM CPUs are noted as Apple-A series; for the ARM 7 CPU it would be Apple-A7.
 
AllWinner design seems to be winning the CPU Wars in the Tablet section as many tablets today are using the AllWinner design, especially their multi-core CPUs. The good thing about this is that the Chinese are keeping the software compatibility to the Raspberry Pi and other systems, while branching out to tablets with their AllWinner boards like the Banana Pi and Orange Pi.
 
As we speak, I'm downloading the Raspbian for the Banana Pi as Bananian does not give me much of anything unless I'm connected to a network and was able to download what I need. But Bananian was able to verify what the Banana Board has: 1GB of RAM, AllWinner CPU, 3 USB Ports, 1GB Ethernet port, and so on as advertised. It Boot Diagnostics is more detailed and intensive, I do not know if this is the Bananian OS Booting or the ROM testing the system. Without a SD card, the monitor gives a bright flash and the Banana Pi turns itself off. With a SD Card, the monitor gives a bright flash and it goes through diagnostics and then boot sequence on the SD Card.
 
A couple of nice things the Banana Pi has if the On/Off button and the Reset Button. And When you tell it to Shutdown, it shuts down, not go into a deep sleep mode like on the Raspberry Pi does. One bad thing it that the Banana Pi is a Power Hog, hungrier than the R-Pi2 which is also a Power Hog. Using a battery with a thin USB cable was not strong enough to run the Banana Pi. Using a Thick cable, it was able to work properly. Thus the Banana Pi is pulling more juice from what PSU one is using; like the Raspberry Pi 2, it is recommended that you use a 5V 2amp PSU on the Banana Pi.
 
I'll post more information once I get an SD Card with Raspbain on it.

Have not been able to download Rapsbian on BananaPi.com. It keeps doing a partial load and then dies.

No luck on the Jessie from BananaPi.com site, it too is a Wheezy release. I need to continue searching for Banana Pi Jessie. If not, there are ways to patch a Raspberry Pi SD's to work on the the Banana Pi.