Re: Looking for ARM hardware

[Alexander Schreiber <als%thangorodrim.ch@localhost>]

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 06:27:05PM +0000, John Klos wrote:
> >>I'm about to order one of these:
> >>http://www.banana-pi.org/r1.html
> >>
> >Before you do, have a /good/ read of this, especially the 'issues' section:
> >http://linux-sunxi.org/Lamobo_R1
> 
> Thank you. I'm glad I hadn't ordered it yet.
> 
> I'm amazed at how hard it is to find a cheap device with two real gigabit
> ethernet interfaces. The MIPS-based EdgeRouter looks good, but USB is broken
> and they're $100 each right now.

If you mean the Erlite3, then the USB is not broken as such. The problem is
that the UBoot in the flash doesn't bother doing a _proper_ initialization
of the USB hardware - just enough the talk to the included USB sticks via
usb-storage and boot from them. As a result, only some USB sticks work with
the Erlite3 (such as the Sandisk Cruzer Fit 16GB) in that state. However, if
you, say, netboot NetBSD current on it and then reboot, it will cheerfully
boot from any random USB stick you've got lying around - because NetBSD
(or for that matter, Linux) actually does a full initialization of the USB
hardware stack. BTDTGNTS. Unfortunately, NetBSD current was ... not really
useful the last time I tried it on the Erlite3 - compiling hello_world.c
worked fine, but building anything from ports failed with weird compiler
errors.

They do work fine with Linux, though ;-)
I've got two of them running Debian Jessie with kernel 4.4.4 doing border
and core router duty.

Kind regards,
           Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison