Subject: Re: mods for proposed port 'tsarm'
To: None <port-arm@netbsd.org>
From: Jesse Off <joff@embeddedARM.com>
List: port-arm
Date: 12/05/2004 14:34:16
> I don't wish to appear to be denigrating your product (indeed, it looks
> like a pretty neat box), but I'm not sure this sort of device can really
> be classed as a full-fledged machine in the way that something like the
> Iyonix is.
>
> That's not meant to imply it can't run NetBSD: it clearly can.  But the
> number of applications that would be viable on it is, I suspect, somewhat
> limited.  The limit on physical RAM is one part of this.

Indeed physical RAM is somewhat limited compared to the desktop and server
markets with only 32MB (we are building future 7250's with 64MB and
128MB).  However, we've found most people wanting to use NetBSD on this
platform aren't going to want to run a high load SQL server or try to use
it with video as a productive workstation.  Our website at
http://www.embeddedARM.com is run by a single lower horsepower SBC and
handles over 400k hits a month.  There is even some (though not a lot) of
PHP dynamically generated HTML in there.

>
> There are a number of boards very similar in specifications to this on the
> market: I'm not sure we'd want to create full ports for all of them, which
> leaves us with a conundrum to solve.  I wonder if we should have a
> 'sbcarm' port (single-board-computer) in which this is the first sub-port.

I do like this idea too.  Hopefully we can come to a consensus soon, as
I'd like to get something committed soon for some others that have
expressed interest.  Should I go forward with renaming to "sbcarm" and
adopt an organization similar to the evbarm port?

//Jesse Off