This past week I was having to play tech support for a family member and
realized the firmware image on his dlink DI-614+ was corrupt. After a quick
upload of a new image, it was working again.
During this time I was reading through the documentation and realized
there's just an ARM7 processor on the device. I know that some of the
linksys devices have one of those other broken unix variant running on them,
so would it ever be likely we'd see a port to one of these simple devices
for BSD? If so, and barring the obvious issue of resources to do the
port, is a hardware donation something that would get people interested in
making the port?
Again, this is just something I was curious about and obviously expect no
commitments :)
Thanks.
- Eric

During this time I was reading through the documentation and realized
there's just an ARM7 processor on the device. I know that some of the
linksys devices have one of those other broken unix variant running on them,
so would it ever be likely we'd see a port to one of these simple devices
for BSD?

I don't speak for developers, but I'm not sure a device with
a processor which looks around 10% the speed of a Zaurus, 8mb RAM, and
undocumented wireless nic is going to be interesting enough to warrant
the time a port takes(read the slides about the Zaurus port for some
information about what's involved in porting to a new machine, it is a
lot of work: ).

Looks like it needs very fine soldering skills just to attach a serial
port:

Wed, 2005-12-28 at 00:52:23 +0000, Stuart Henderson proclaimed

I don't speak for developers, but I'm not sure a device with
a processor which looks around 10% the speed of a Zaurus, 8mb RAM, and
undocumented wireless nic is going to be interesting enough to warrant
the time a port takes(read the slides about the Zaurus port for some
information about what's involved in porting to a new machine, it is a
lot of work: ).

Right, but the problem with a zaurus is that it doesn't lend itself to be a
gateway easily. Further, there's many insecure products out there that I'm
sure many of us are using for wireless access. Yes, I've created ad-hoc
networks, etc., but this is a low powered device with no moving parts.
Wouldn't it be nice if one of those vendors ported BSD (or any other
BSD) for us? <grin>

eric wrote:
Right, but the problem with a zaurus is that it doesn't lend itself to be a
gateway easily. Further, there's many insecure products out there that I'm
sure many of us are using for wireless access. Yes, I've created ad-hoc
networks, etc., but this is a low powered device with no moving parts.
Wouldn't it be nice if one of those vendors ported BSD (or any other
BSD) for us? <grin>

Sure it'd be nice, but even if you had a port, BSD does native
compiles, so by the time you finished building the S, you'd be two
releases behind.

Tue, 2005-12-27 at 20:54:48 -0500, Steve Shockley proclaimed

Sure it'd be nice, but even if you had a port, BSD does native
compiles, so by the time you finished building the S, you'd be two
releases behind.

Heh, true. That would be awful! There'd probably have to be quite a bit of
everything removed out of base before even starting. Ugh.

Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 12:52:23AM +0000, Stuart Henderson wrote:
During this time I was reading through the documentation and realized
there's just an ARM7 processor on the device. I know that some of the
linksys devices have one of those other broken unix variant running on them,
so would it ever be likely we'd see a port to one of these simple devices
for BSD?

I don't speak for developers, but I'm not sure a device with
a processor which looks around 10% the speed of a Zaurus, 8mb RAM, and
undocumented wireless nic is going to be interesting enough to warrant
the time a port takes(read the slides about the Zaurus port for some
information about what's involved in porting to a new machine, it is a
lot of work: ).

Looks like it needs very fine soldering skills just to attach a serial
port:

If anyone knows about an ARM 11 based device that has reasonable I: network,
disk options (CF or better), minipci, The developers would be quite
interested in finding out about such a device.

Dale Rahndrahn (AT) dalerahn (DOT) com

Tue, 27 Dec 2005, Dale Rahn wrote:
SNIP
If anyone knows about an ARM 11 based device that has reasonable I: network,
disk options (CF or better), minipci, The developers would be quite
interested in finding out about such a device.

Dale Rahndrahn (AT) dalerahn (DOT) com

I've been looking, all I've seen is a couple of reference designs. ti
omap2420 H4 reference board.

diana

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 21:28:06 -0500, Dale Rahn <drahn (AT) dalerahn (DOT) com>
wrote:

Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 12:52:23AM +0000, Stuart Henderson wrote:
>During this time I was reading through the documentation and realized
>there's just an ARM7 processor on the device. I know that some of the
>linksys devices have one of those other broken unix variant running on them,
>so would it ever be likely we'd see a port to one of these simple devices
>for BSD?
>
>I don't speak for developers, but I'm not sure a device with
>a processor which looks around 10% the speed of a Zaurus, 8mb RAM, and
>undocumented wireless nic is going to be interesting enough to warrant
>the time a port takes(read the slides about the Zaurus port for some
>information about what's involved in porting to a new machine, it is a
>lot of work: ).
>
>Looks like it needs very fine soldering skills just to attach a serial
>port:
>
>
>If anyone knows about an ARM 11 based device that has reasonable I: network,
>disk options (CF or better), minipci, The developers would be quite
>interested in finding out about such a device.
>
>Dale Rahndrahn (AT) dalerahn (DOT) com

I've got an Atmel AT91RM9200 reference board over here that somewhat
fits your BM. It's ARM9 based. The problem is, as usual, the cost of
reference design boards from the manufacturer is usually very high for
the sake of preventing casual buyers -Since chip vendors are in the
business of selling chips rather than selling boards, they don't want to
sell boards be since it's competition with their customers.

Heck, if there's interest in an BSD port, Atmel might be interested
in supplying a set of boards to developers If you're interested, let
me know.

There's already full WinCE and linux support, so porting would probably
not need to be done completely blind. Though I haven't really checked
thoroughly, docs *seem* to be generally available and even the design
files are available.

Electrical Schematics are available (Cadence:)
PCB Layout files are available (Cadence:Allegro)
Complete BM is available (Microsoft:Excel)

Reference Board Details:

Chip Details:

The main (frames) Atmel support site for their reference designs:
http://www.at91.com/

The AT91RM9200 reference design very hackable for all sorts of various
uses and is being used as a software development platform for a lot of
interesting products:

DISCLAIMER: I know the guys who built the security camera linked above
and I got to tinker with it, so I have a bias. ;-)

jcr