Routerboard RB800

[Benjamin Perrault]

Thanks Andrew. I might try to get spin one up once a get a few free moment.

I've got one at home ( net booted with NetBSD ) - so, from at least how I built my image from what documentation I've found, though it does seem to sort of acknowledge the compact flash controller on the flip side of the board ( perhaps it could be booted from that ?). I'll dig into if linux actually fully comes up.

So I'm picking 2 boards up for sure wednesday of this week from where they are stored, and things are looking good on a possible third one. Since there seems to be interest, but know one's officially throw their hat in the ring, if some one will, who would that person(s) be? I might have a case for 1 of the 2, though i'll have to check on PoE injectors ( I've only actually powered them via PoE, but I've been using an ubiquiti PoE switch to do it ). I know I don't have an CF cards laying about. 

cheers and thanks,
-bp

On Sep 22, 2013, at 6:18 PM, Andrew Thompson <thompsa at FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> On 21 September 2013 11:40, Benjamin Perrault <ben.perrault at gmail.com> wrote:
>> To the freebsd embedded team,
>> 
>> I have at least 1 - probably 2  RB800s available to contribute to get it supported by FreeBSD if someone is SERIOUS about putting in the effort. I noticed it's on the embedded want list on the wiki - so that's a start - and it's a nice platform that  could use from a proper OS ( not awful proprietary RouterOS or a linux flavor ). While netbsd has support for it, it's not something I use regularly. Additionally, work/a port on this - it will probably work on the MikroTik RB1100 and RB1100ah ( at least from looking at netbsd/linux code & mailing lists I've looked at ) and possibly a few more MPC8544 based boards - so there is additional merit beyond just this I think.
>> 
>> While I would love to attempt this port myself - I fear I lack the apptitude ( and don't want to spew out some nasty hack ). So extending the offer of hardware is what I can contribute. The boards are located in San Francisco, but i can ship to most places without to much problem ( though anyone local I'll treat to a few pints as well for the endeavor - pre, during and post ).
>> 
>> So if anyone is SERIOUSLY interested in the FreeBSD development team ( I don't like to see hardware go to waste ) - please let me know / contact me. I would love to see proper BSD on this platform.
> 
> 
> Attached are changed I used around 12 months ago to get it to boot
> from a nfs root, not sure if they still apply correctly. I spent a
> huge amount of time discovering that the dts file needed a chosen{}
> section to get the uart selected/working :)
> 
> The main issue with the RB800 is the flash chip is behind a
> programmable logic chip and Mikrotik won't release the details for it.
> Netbsd can only netboot too (last time I checked).
> 
> 
> Andrew
> <mpc8544ds.dts><rb800-fdt.diff>