So, who makes this one run FreeBSD? ;-)

[Bernd Walter]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 02:33:48PM -0800, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
> Bernd Walter wrote this message on Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 23:06 +0200:
> > On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 11:12:05AM -0800, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
> > > Bernd Walter wrote this message on Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 12:36 +0200:
> > > > But considered the small price distance to the smallest Soekris,
> > > > which runs FreeBSD, only the size and supply power is an interesting
> > > > point.
> > > 
> > > Or you can look at the TS-7200 from http://www.embeddedarm.com/ .  It's
> > > smaller than a Soekris, and is slightly larger than the PC-104 form
> > > factor..  Right now I have it netbooting, but I need to figure out why
> > > I have some ethernet issues...  The code is in p4, though if people
> > > are really interested, I can generate a patch...
> > 
> > It costs more then the Soekris 4526-20 and is only slightly smaller in
> > size.
> 
> plus has dual mini-pci..  while the TS-7200 only has PC-104 (basicly ISA)..

Both have their pro's.
PC-104 ist definitively cheaper to add custom hardware to, but also
slower.

> > And the 4526 doesn't need regulated power plus has onboard ata flash.
> 
> also looks like it supports PoE, which the TS-7200 doesn't...  Right
> now I'm using a breadboarded LM7805 for power, but I am going to build
> a daughter card for this project, and so I'm going to throw a switching
> power supply on it.. so the regulated requirement isn't such a big deal..
> also, it doesn't need as much power either..  TS says only 1 AMP at 5V
> is necessary...  I haven't measured it yet though...

1A is a lot to handle with a linar regulator, but this may include
power to additional hardware - e.g. USB ports.

> > But this is still an interesting board after all - especially as it has
> > USB ports and lot of GPIO, which I need sometimes.
> > USB on Soekris require add-on hardware our pricier boards.
> > How stable is FreeBSD on ARMv9 already?
> > I didn't even know that it is running yet.
> 
> So far it's been fine..  There may be issues with optimized crossbuilt
> worlds from i386...  But I can boot multiuser mode, and it runs all the
> scripts and everything to come up...

That's great.

> As I mentioned the ethernet is a bit flaky...  For some reason, some
> packets have the underrun and carrier loss bit set on them..  This is
> the case on packets around 80 bytes in size (like reverse dns packets
> for 192.168.0.1, but not 192.168.0.10), and may be a timing issue that
> I'm not familar with...  But nfs root boots fine...

Well that's just a bug with lot of hope to get fixed.

> I do plan on figuring it out...  USB doesn't work yet, it does probe,
> but causes issues.. and even though they say it's USB 2.0, it's only
> for electrical... No ehci controler.. the USB controller is ohci, and
> so only supports up to full speed usb (12Mb/s)...

I personally use USB on such systems for attaching custom hardware.
Full speed is fine for that.
Since you say it's OHCI there is hope and I know you are familar with
USB host controllers.
It's OK to claim a full/low speed only device beeing USB 2.0.
High speed isn't mandandory for 2.0.

> Also, this work isn't directly sponsored by TS, so it doesn't have any
> drivers for their other boards, like the RTC, serial or lcd + keypad
> parts that NetBSD does...

At least the documentation is good - and between the lines I read that
NetBSD support the board too.

> The real reason why I'm using the TS-7200 is because it had on board
> AC'97 and I2S support (they aren't exposed to headers so I plan on
> soldering my own wires to the chip)...  Which soekris definately doesn't
> have... :)

The Soekris CPUs have lots of features that arn't wired.
But it's hopeless since the CPUs are BGA.

> dmesg from my last boot is at: http://people.freebsd.org/~jmg/dmesg.ts7200

I don't know where to put it performancewise to x86 systems.
Does it feel slow on ssh?
e.g. how long does it take to log in?

> As you can see, no RTC.. :)
> 18 Mar 15:36:25 ntpdate[241]: step time server 192.168.0.30 offset 1111188933.058709 sec

A matter of time :)

-- 
B.Walter                   BWCT                http://www.bwct.de
bernd at bwct.de                                  info at bwct.de