Is anyone going to port NetBSD to the Atheros System on a Chip?  The
Atheros AR2312 is a MIPS CPU plus 802.11a/b/g wireless on a single chip.
It is showing up in a new crop of inexpensive ($50-$70) wireless access
points, for example, the Netgear WGR614, which appears to be
eminently "hackable" [1].

The Atheros SoC presents more opportunities to the NetBSD hacker than
other wireless SoCs.  For example, the (mostly) open source ath(4) driver
will operate the wireless bits of the Atheros SoC; compare with the
Broadcom SoC, whose wireless bits are most definitely closed.  AFAICT,
the Atheros SoC does not need an "exotic" MIPS toolchain; compare with
the Realtek SoC, which uses a "Lexra core" that our GNU toolchain will
not support without patches.

Dave

[1] See http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=RG&Post=5&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session=

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933