Synology NAS

[Frank Wille <frank%phoenix.owl.de@localhost>]

Hi,

does anybody have experience with hacking the PPC-based NAS boxes from
Synology? They could be quite interesting when there was an easy way to
replace the firmware.

As far as I understand the Synology NAS has PPCboot (not u-boot) installed
in flash, and the only way to get access to it is by soldering a serial
cable to the mainboard, including a MAX232-based circuit. Is that correct?

That would be ok for a developer, but not acceptable for an end-user,
provided that a NetBSD port would ever work. I found out that the Synology
can be updated by loading *.pat files (which is a tar-archive). Would
that be enough for a future NetBSD installation?

I know about the effort of Toru Nishimura and the README.NAS in the
sys/arch/sandpoint directory. Is there still any work being done or
planned for the future?

I don't have a Synology ATM, but maybe I could get a used DS101g+ or DS106.

Especially the new DS109+ looks quite attractive with its 1GHz MPC8533
and 512MB RAM. Could be a small but powerful server with low power
consumption, when running NetBSD. Unfortunately we still have no e500
support.

-- 
Frank Wille