Re: Routerboards (was: Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty)
On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 10:44:10AM -0400, Bret Lambert scribbled: # So, a question to the list: besides soekris and WRAP boards (and the # specific board that began the thread), what tiny, non-PC machines are # out there and useful? I've been in contact for some time with the folks at AR Infotek in Taiwan. They're exceedingly nice people and offer some very cool products. I'm trying to get ahold of a small pile of their 3258-245 model to use as OpenBSD+carp firewalls and routers. The main issue with them is that they aren't a distributor of their product; they mainly sell to system integrators and the like. They do sell in small quantities for evaluation purposes, and OpenBSD has been ported to run on them. I was (just today) sent a press release from a while back about OpenBSD on their 3xxx series machines: http://www.arinfotek.com/news/news_d.asp?sty=2pid=29 -- Jonathan Towne
Re: Routerboards (was: Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty)
On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 10:44:10AM -0400, Bret Lambert wrote: | On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 12:15 -0600, Chris Kuethe wrote: | I sent a couple of emails - hey, this sounds like a nice plan, tell | me more - and never heard back one way or the other. *shrug* I have a | | That's unfortunate; they looked like neat little boxes. | | My curiosity was piqued, and I started looking around, and found | embeddedplanet.com, but that seems to be aimed more at commercial system | developers than end-users. | | So, a question to the list: besides soekris and WRAP boards (and the | specific board that began the thread), what tiny, non-PC machines are | out there and useful? Not really an answer to your question (as it's i386), but I have a Fabiatech FX5620 w/ a VIA Eden 1GHz CPU and 256MB of RAM. It has 1x re(4) and 5x (rl). I added a 1GB CF disk as wd0 and a ral(4) for WiFi access. It's very low power (24V DC @ 1.25A), has serial (no BIOS support, unfortunately) and completely silent. Alas, OpenBSD crashes on my machine after some running time for (as yet) unknown reasons - could very well be this particular machine (if anyone else on the list has this machine running OpenBSD, let me know) Cheers, Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd -- [++-]+++.+++[---].+++[+ +++-].++[-]+.--.[-] http://www.weirdnet.nl/ [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 05:48:56AM +0900, anon trol wrote: I think I have convinced myself that I want to sponsor an architecture port effort. Specifically, I would like to see OpenBSD ported to the Routerboard 532 (IDT MIPS32 4Kc processor). After STFW, I see that a few other people If anyone is interested: I have begun work on an OpenBSD port for the Routerboard 500's. It's something I have been musing over for some time. I am currently marinating my senses in IDT/MIPS documentation and have just a few tentative sketches to-date. Like most, I am rather severely limited in the amount of time I can spare and may not be able to offer more than 10 hours per week for certain periods. Nevertheless, I will persevere and would be delighted to collaborate and liase with anyone who has a similar interest in seeing OBSD on the Routerboard family. -- Merv
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
On 4/10/07, anon trol [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not sure where to ask this; so, I thought I'd start here in misc first. I think I have convinced myself that I want to sponsor an architecture port effort. Specifically, I would like to see OpenBSD ported to the Routerboard 532 (IDT MIPS32 4Kc processor). After STFW, I see that a few other people have posted questions about this in the past without a lot of positive response (it seems that there might have been a port that would have been suitable at one point in time, but is no longer part of the current distribution). I'm curious what the non-technical (finical) stewardship requirements might be for bringing back a dropped architecture and making sure that it works on a very specific set of target boards (starting with the 532). I don't think this is too much of a technical undertaking (but at the moment it's beyond my ability and time constraints)... the routerboard 532 boots off of compaq flash (no need to muck about with the on-board flash). The only things that worry me are the slim resources (64MB of memory max) and support for the first NIC (IDT Korina 10/100 Mbit/s Fast Ethernet port). I would be willing to forgo support for the IDT NIC just to get things started quickly (the other NICs are VIA VT6105). I would want support for at least one commodity 802.11(series) wireless NIC in both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz ranges. Other potential issue include the funky bootstrap code (which looks for ELF), custom BIOS and MIPS endedness. I don't want this to be a goatrope where I send off a bunch a Routerboard hardware and nobody even tries to collect the bounty, but I know the OpenBSD project has a pretty good reputation for getting things done when equipment and funds are provided (if I'm off mark with that semi-acquired assumption, please someone fill me in off-line). Where do I start and who do I need to talk to? I have been interested in this before and I'm thinkin of ordering a routerboard just because I need a new router. This task is rather big though. Sure one could start with the evmips-port from NetBSD (there was a mail about supporting MIPS 4kc would probobly only be to add some strings for it) but it still needs to be ported to OpenBSD which is probobly a rather big task. The 32mb RAM (Routerboard 532 has 32 mb RAM and Routerboard 532A has 64 MB) is not a problem, I have run OpenBSD on x86 with 16mb RAM without problems. The problem I see is to get it to boot of good, and to port the flash. When those two task are done the rest of the drivers will probobly not be that much of a problem. I think there is a Realtek ethernet on it which is already supported by OpenBSD. This is for sure an interesting board and there are turning up more and more MIPS based router that would be great to be able to run OpenBSD at. Is there anybody already working on this? BR dunceor
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
Out of curiousity, why do a routerboard, when you can use something like the following: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813185094
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
On 4/11/07, bofh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Out of curiousity, why do a routerboard, when you can use something like the following: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813185094 Well, I would like to see the router board simply because, I would like to make a router / switch device to replace a Linksys 54G Router, maybe 3 or 4 lan ports and a 1 or 2 MPCI slots, 1 for hardware crypto and the other for a wireless device. if anyone has any ideas or links that would be great. Sam Fourman Jr.
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
On 4/11/07, bofh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Out of curiousity, why do a routerboard, when you can use something like the following: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813185094 Power consumption, heat, noise, unnecessary parts... Greg
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:57:45 -0400 bofh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Out of curiousity, why do a routerboard, when you can use something like the following: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813185094 maybe some are not that convinced using x86? ;)
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 12:05 -0500, Sam Fourman Jr. wrote: Well, I would like to see the router board simply because, I would like to make a router / switch device to replace a Linksys 54G Router, maybe 3 or 4 lan ports and a 1 or 2 MPCI slots, 1 for hardware crypto and the other for a wireless device. if anyone has any ideas or links that would be great. The propietor of magicbox.pl, which offers powerpc-based boards, had offered to ship hardware to any and all interested OpenBSD devs; a few confused me as the contact point, so it looks like there was some developer interest in that hardware, but I haven't heard anything since. This was something like a month, month and a half ago; if any dev who contacted that vendor could give a quick it worked/he was jerking us around response, I'd love to get an update. Those boards are (unless I'm forgetting) based in the IBM405 chipset; I'd like to see router boards based on the IBM440EBx (again, I may be misremembering), which is supposed to have on-proc crypto support. The only board based on that that I've been able to find in an admittedly short and half-hearted googling was a 5-port w/linux on flash from AMCC. - Bert
Re: Routerboard 532 Bounty
On 4/11/07, Bret Lambert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 12:05 -0500, Sam Fourman Jr. wrote: Well, I would like to see the router board simply because, I would like to make a router / switch device to replace a Linksys 54G Router, maybe 3 or 4 lan ports and a 1 or 2 MPCI slots, 1 for hardware crypto and the other for a wireless device. if anyone has any ideas or links that would be great. The propietor of magicbox.pl, which offers powerpc-based boards, had offered to ship hardware to any and all interested OpenBSD devs; a few confused me as the contact point, so it looks like there was some developer interest in that hardware, but I haven't heard anything since. This was something like a month, month and a half ago; if any dev who contacted that vendor could give a quick it worked/he was jerking us around response, I'd love to get an update. I sent a couple of emails - hey, this sounds like a nice plan, tell me more - and never heard back one way or the other. *shrug* I have a huge pile of things to work on so I'm not going to get bent out of shape if nothing materializes, but they do look like they could be useful for some applications. Those boards are (unless I'm forgetting) based in the IBM405 chipset; I'd like to see router boards based on the IBM440EBx (again, I may be misremembering), which is supposed to have on-proc crypto support. The only board based on that that I've been able to find in an admittedly short and half-hearted googling was a 5-port w/linux on flash from AMCC. The routerboards look to be AMCC clones of the 405EP -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?
Routerboard 532 Bounty
I'm not sure where to ask this; so, I thought I'd start here in misc first. I think I have convinced myself that I want to sponsor an architecture port effort. Specifically, I would like to see OpenBSD ported to the Routerboard 532 (IDT MIPS32 4Kc processor). After STFW, I see that a few other people have posted questions about this in the past without a lot of positive response (it seems that there might have been a port that would have been suitable at one point in time, but is no longer part of the current distribution). I'm curious what the non-technical (finical) stewardship requirements might be for bringing back a dropped architecture and making sure that it works on a very specific set of target boards (starting with the 532). I don't think this is too much of a technical undertaking (but at the moment it's beyond my ability and time constraints)... the routerboard 532 boots off of compaq flash (no need to muck about with the on-board flash). The only things that worry me are the slim resources (64MB of memory max) and support for the first NIC (IDT Korina 10/100 Mbit/s Fast Ethernet port). I would be willing to forgo support for the IDT NIC just to get things started quickly (the other NICs are VIA VT6105). I would want support for at least one commodity 802.11(series) wireless NIC in both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz ranges. Other potential issue include the funky bootstrap code (which looks for ELF), custom BIOS and MIPS endedness. I don't want this to be a goatrope where I send off a bunch a Routerboard hardware and nobody even tries to collect the bounty, but I know the OpenBSD project has a pretty good reputation for getting things done when equipment and funds are provided (if I'm off mark with that semi-acquired assumption, please someone fill me in off-line). Where do I start and who do I need to talk to?
