FreeBSD on ARM Cortex board [Was: Porting FreeBSD to Raspberry Pi]

[Arnaud Lacombe]

Hi,

[Starting a new thread, added Ben Gray to the Cc: list]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 10:30 PM, Arnaud Lacombe <lacombar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 10:05 PM, Nate Dobbs <misconfiguration at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at freebsd.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thursday,  3 November 2011 at 21:05:54 -0400, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
>>> > On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at freebsd.org>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >> On Thursday,  3 November 2011 at 11:33:25 -0400, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
>>> >>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Nate Dobbs
>>> >>> <misconfiguration at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>>> 10 year old core or not, the ARM is the worlds most widely used
>>> >>>> processor;
>>> >>>>
>>> >>> Please read what I said correctly, I said "this ARM11 is obsolete"
>>> >>> (even if still used, for sure) ...
>>> >>
>>> >> Clearly price is an issue for this device.  What's so bad about ARM11
>>> >> that it shouldn't be used?
>>> >>
>>> > If you read my original comment, I did point out the $25 price tag was
>>> > pretty much the only interesting thing. Now, what it has been designed
>>> > for, multimedia, is going to be handled by a closed-source binary blob
>>> > without datasheet, so let me turn back the question: what do you
>>> > expect doing with it ?
>>>
>>> That's not turning back the question; that's a separate question.  But
>>> it's a good one.  I don't really see it as a multimedia device.  My
>>> interest would be in little embedded agents in different parts of the
>>> house, for things like measuring temperatures.  I'm sure lots of other
>>> applications will come to mind.
>>>
>>> And yes, I'll probably use the supplied Linux port.  But if a FreeBSD
>>> alternative becomes available, I'd certainly prefer that.
>>>
>>> Greg
>>> --
>>> Sent from my desktop computer
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>>
>> I agree with groggy, something I'd personally use it for is a small SSH
>> server to allow a pinhole into my home network. It would serve as a very
>> good replacement for the mac mini that's sitting in my DMZ simply handling
>> connections for my SSH tunnel so I can bypass the proxy at work.
>>
>> Power savings would be significant and it would be plenty powerful to handle
>> this task. A small webcam server comes to mind as well; there could be
>> plenty of useful things I could think of outside the realm of multimedia.
>>
> you certainly want:
>
> http://beagleboard.org/bone
>
> $89, 700MHz Cortex A8, 256MB DRR2, micro-SD. However, do not expect
> being able to run FreeBSD on it before a few years :)
>
actually, some initial work has been started by Ben Gray:

http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard-freebsd/

and

https://gitorious.org/+freebsd-omap-team/freebsd/freebsd-omap/

 - Arnaud