Mips SOC, Linux

Mips SOC, Linux

[PhilipS]

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Hello All,
I am looking for MIPS Development boards for my hobby projects like Linux
Porting and Development, I am here by looking for an Expert suggestion to
buy a MIPS custom boards, so far on Google I could come across
vendor selling MIPS Evaluation target boards which is Obviously expensive
which ,I cannot afford to buy. I hope I am asking this question at the right
place, else please suggest me where I can post my request if one knows about
it.

Regards
Philip S

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Re: Mips SOC, Linux

[Ralf Baechle]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:59:11AM +0530, PhilipS wrote:

> Hello All,
> I am looking for MIPS Development boards for my hobby projects like Linux
> Porting and Development, I am here by looking for an Expert suggestion to
> buy a MIPS custom boards, so far on Google I could come across
> vendor selling MIPS Evaluation target boards which is Obviously expensive
> which ,I cannot afford to buy. I hope I am asking this question at the right
> place, else please suggest me where I can post my request if one knows about
> it.

You're touch a big problem here, so I'm going to use this opportunity to
post a rant ...

Most of the eval boards are have very high price tags due to low volume and
esotheric components such as very large and fast FPGAs or pricey matched
impedance connectors for logic analyzers.  Another factor is that the
vendors making these boards usually target their commercial customers and
factor in a fairly generous markup for the post-sale support into the sales
price of the board.

From a Free Software perspective this is a bloody disaster.  Even if for a
moment I put on my dot com hat again, it's one.  Over the past years the
commercial contributions have primarily focused on hardware support.  In
many cases I received large code drops of lousy to medicore quality and
no maintenance at all after the initial code drop.  I won't go into the
reasons here nor do I think I need to name companies here - but it's a big
problem.

As usual exceptions proof the rule and also as usual there are alot of
grey shades between white and black.  Some companies seem to have tremendous
difficulty to be good open source citizens - but they throw some free
hardware into the crowd.  Not enough to satisfy the demand and usually only
a few key people are really able to take advantage of that.

Otoh many if not most important and highest quality contributions over the
years have come from hobby hackers, so in the end the lack availability of
modern hardware is making everybody suffer.  Meanwhile the importance of
Linux as OS for MIPS is continuing to rise ...

I hear similar complaints from other, mostly embedded architectures such as
ARM.  But that's not an excuse - this problem wants some remedy.

But let's also look at the options you have right now:

 o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.
   Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.
 o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some the Linksys
   WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.
 o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree (working in cleaing
   the patches) would be another reasonably priced option.  Generally you
   may want to look at the list of platforms supported by
   http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have friendly price tags.
   Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a bit quirky to
   use.
 o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on the order of
   $100.  I have not idea this is true or still true for the new owner of
   Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.
 o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space Qemu is a
   really nice and well performing system which also is rapidly improving.

  Ralf

Re: Mips SOC, Linux

[Ralf Baechle]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:59:11AM +0530, PhilipS wrote:

> Hello All,
> I am looking for MIPS Development boards for my hobby projects like Linux
> Porting and Development, I am here by looking for an Expert suggestion to
> buy a MIPS custom boards, so far on Google I could come across
> vendor selling MIPS Evaluation target boards which is Obviously expensive
> which ,I cannot afford to buy. I hope I am asking this question at the right
> place, else please suggest me where I can post my request if one knows about
> it.

You're touch a big problem here, so I'm going to use this opportunity to
post a rant ...

Most of the eval boards are have very high price tags due to low volume and
esotheric components such as very large and fast FPGAs or pricey matched
impedance connectors for logic analyzers.  Another factor is that the
vendors making these boards usually target their commercial customers and
factor in a fairly generous markup for the post-sale support into the sales
price of the board.

Re: Mips SOC, Linux

[David Goodenough]

On Sunday 11 March 2007 13:56, Ralf Baechle wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:59:11AM +0530, PhilipS wrote:
> > Hello All,
> > I am looking for MIPS Development boards for my hobby projects like Linux
> > Porting and Development, I am here by looking for an Expert suggestion to
> > buy a MIPS custom boards, so far on Google I could come across
> > vendor selling MIPS Evaluation target boards which is Obviously expensive
> > which ,I cannot afford to buy. I hope I am asking this question at the
> > right place, else please suggest me where I can post my request if one
> > knows about it.
>
> You're touch a big problem here, so I'm going to use this opportunity to
> post a rant ...
>
> Most of the eval boards are have very high price tags due to low volume and
> esotheric components such as very large and fast FPGAs or pricey matched
> impedance connectors for logic analyzers.  Another factor is that the
> vendors making these boards usually target their commercial customers and
> factor in a fairly generous markup for the post-sale support into the sales
> price of the board.
>
> From a Free Software perspective this is a bloody disaster.  Even if for a
> moment I put on my dot com hat again, it's one.  Over the past years the
> commercial contributions have primarily focused on hardware support.  In
> many cases I received large code drops of lousy to medicore quality and
> no maintenance at all after the initial code drop.  I won't go into the
> reasons here nor do I think I need to name companies here - but it's a big
> problem.
>
> As usual exceptions proof the rule and also as usual there are alot of
> grey shades between white and black.  Some companies seem to have
> tremendous difficulty to be good open source citizens - but they throw some
> free hardware into the crowd.  Not enough to satisfy the demand and usually
> only a few key people are really able to take advantage of that.
>
> Otoh many if not most important and highest quality contributions over the
> years have come from hobby hackers, so in the end the lack availability of
> modern hardware is making everybody suffer.  Meanwhile the importance of
> Linux as OS for MIPS is continuing to rise ...
>
> I hear similar complaints from other, mostly embedded architectures such as
> ARM.  But that's not an excuse - this problem wants some remedy.
>
> But let's also look at the options you have right now:
>
>  o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.
>    Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.
>  o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some the Linksys
>    WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.
>  o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree (working in cleaing
>    the patches) would be another reasonably priced option.  Generally you
Which of their boards are you working on patches for?

The RB532 seems to be working OK now with a 2.6 kernel on OpenWrt, but I tried
to migrate some patches for the 1xx series (the ADM5120 based cards) and I 
could not get them boot beyond the dnode and inode table initialisations.  If
you have anything better that would work with current kernels I would be very
interested to have a look.

David
>    may want to look at the list of platforms supported by
>    http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have friendly price tags.
>    Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a bit quirky to
>    use.
>  o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on the order of
>    $100.  I have not idea this is true or still true for the new owner of
>    Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.
>  o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space Qemu is a
>    really nice and well performing system which also is rapidly improving.
>
>   Ralf

RE: Mips SOC, Linux

[Mitchell, Earl]

> But let's also look at the options you have right now:
> 
>  o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.
>    Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.
>  o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some 
> the Linksys
>    WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.
>  o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree 
> (working in cleaing
>    the patches) would be another reasonably priced option.  
> Generally you
>    may want to look at the list of platforms supported by
>    http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have 
> friendly price tags.
>    Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a 
> bit quirky to
>    use.
>  o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on 
> the order of
>    $100.  I have not idea this is true or still true for the 
> new owner of
>    Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.
>  o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space 
> Qemu is a
>    really nice and well performing system which also is 
> rapidly improving.
> 
>   Ralf

Another possible option are the Roku HD series boxes. 
The old Roku HD's (also known as Photobridge) used a
MIPS-based chip and Roku provided linux SDK for developers to download
(see http://www.rokulabs.com/community_developers_sb.php). 

That box is no longer sold.  However it appears they now have a new box
called the Brightsign HD600 http://www.rokulabs.com/digital_brightsign.php
which sells for $300. The manual says it uses a Nexperia chip. They
may eventually provide a linux SDK for this box also.  

-earlm

RE: Mips SOC, Linux

[Mitchell, Earl]

> But let's also look at the options you have right now:
> 
>  o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.
>    Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.
>  o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some 
> the Linksys
>    WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.
>  o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree 
> (working in cleaing
>    the patches) would be another reasonably priced option.  
> Generally you
>    may want to look at the list of platforms supported by
>    http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have 
> friendly price tags.
>    Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a 
> bit quirky to
>    use.
>  o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on 
> the order of
>    $100.  I have not idea this is true or still true for the 
> new owner of
>    Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.
>  o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space 
> Qemu is a
>    really nice and well performing system which also is 
> rapidly improving.
> 
>   Ralf

Another possible option are the Roku HD series boxes. 
The old Roku HD's (also known as Photobridge) used a
MIPS-based chip and Roku provided linux SDK for developers to download
(see http://www.rokulabs.com/community_developers_sb.php). 

That box is no longer sold.  However it appears they now have a new box
called the Brightsign HD600 http://www.rokulabs.com/digital_brightsign.php
which sells for $300. The manual says it uses a Nexperia chip. They
may eventually provide a linux SDK for this box also.  

-earlm

回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Songmao Tian]

Have you heard of loongson? the current version of the cpu is 2e,
while 2f will be released this year, which will clocks at 1GHz,
delivering rather high perfermance:)

Fulong is a miniPC now based on loongson 2e. you can get one for free
if you make recognized contribution to the system:)


Some introduction here:
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/

2007/3/11, Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>:
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:59:11AM +0530, PhilipS wrote:
>
> > Hello All,
> > I am looking for MIPS Development boards for my hobby projects like Linux
> > Porting and Development, I am here by looking for an Expert suggestion to
> > buy a MIPS custom boards, so far on Google I could come across
> > vendor selling MIPS Evaluation target boards which is Obviously expensive
> > which ,I cannot afford to buy. I hope I am asking this question at the
> right
> > place, else please suggest me where I can post my request if one knows
> about
> > it.
>
> You're touch a big problem here, so I'm going to use this opportunity to
> post a rant ...
>
> Most of the eval boards are have very high price tags due to low volume and
> esotheric components such as very large and fast FPGAs or pricey matched
> impedance connectors for logic analyzers.  Another factor is that the
> vendors making these boards usually target their commercial customers and
> factor in a fairly generous markup for the post-sale support into the sales
> price of the board.
>
> From a Free Software perspective this is a bloody disaster.  Even if for a
> moment I put on my dot com hat again, it's one.  Over the past years the
> commercial contributions have primarily focused on hardware support.  In
> many cases I received large code drops of lousy to medicore quality and
> no maintenance at all after the initial code drop.  I won't go into the
> reasons here nor do I think I need to name companies here - but it's a big
> problem.
>
> As usual exceptions proof the rule and also as usual there are alot of
> grey shades between white and black.  Some companies seem to have tremendous
> difficulty to be good open source citizens - but they throw some free
> hardware into the crowd.  Not enough to satisfy the demand and usually only
> a few key people are really able to take advantage of that.
>
> Otoh many if not most important and highest quality contributions over the
> years have come from hobby hackers, so in the end the lack availability of
> modern hardware is making everybody suffer.  Meanwhile the importance of
> Linux as OS for MIPS is continuing to rise ...
>
> I hear similar complaints from other, mostly embedded architectures such as
> ARM.  But that's not an excuse - this problem wants some remedy.
>
> But let's also look at the options you have right now:
>
>  o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.
>    Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.
>  o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some the Linksys
>    WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.
>  o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree (working in cleaing
>    the patches) would be another reasonably priced option.  Generally you
>    may want to look at the list of platforms supported by
>    http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have friendly price tags.
>    Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a bit quirky to
>    use.
>  o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on the order of
>    $100.  I have not idea this is true or still true for the new owner of
>    Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.
>  o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space Qemu is a
>    really nice and well performing system which also is rapidly improving.
>
>   Ralf
>
>

Re: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Imre Kaloz]

Well, a year before or so I've tried to get a Godson based unit (a  
Municator) with no luck.. I wasn't able to find a contact regarding the  
Lemote, but if you can, I would be also interested in working on this  
platform.

Imre

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:07:49 +0100, Songmao Tian <kingkongmao@gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Have you heard of loongson? the current version of the cpu is 2e,
> while 2f will be released this year, which will clocks at 1GHz,
> delivering rather high perfermance:)
>
> Fulong is a miniPC now based on loongson 2e. you can get one for free
> if you make recognized contribution to the system:)
>
>
> Some introduction here:
> http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/
>
> 2007/3/11, Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>:
>> On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:59:11AM +0530, PhilipS wrote:
>>
>> > Hello All,
>> > I am looking for MIPS Development boards for my hobby projects like  
>> Linux
>> > Porting and Development, I am here by looking for an Expert  
>> suggestion to
>> > buy a MIPS custom boards, so far on Google I could come across
>> > vendor selling MIPS Evaluation target boards which is Obviously  
>> expensive
>> > which ,I cannot afford to buy. I hope I am asking this question at the
>> right
>> > place, else please suggest me where I can post my request if one knows
>> about
>> > it.
>>
>> You're touch a big problem here, so I'm going to use this opportunity to
>> post a rant ...
>>
>> Most of the eval boards are have very high price tags due to low volume  
>> and
>> esotheric components such as very large and fast FPGAs or pricey matched
>> impedance connectors for logic analyzers.  Another factor is that the
>> vendors making these boards usually target their commercial customers  
>> and
>> factor in a fairly generous markup for the post-sale support into the  
>> sales
>> price of the board.
>>
>> From a Free Software perspective this is a bloody disaster.  Even if  
>> for a
>> moment I put on my dot com hat again, it's one.  Over the past years the
>> commercial contributions have primarily focused on hardware support.  In
>> many cases I received large code drops of lousy to medicore quality and
>> no maintenance at all after the initial code drop.  I won't go into the
>> reasons here nor do I think I need to name companies here - but it's a  
>> big
>> problem.
>>
>> As usual exceptions proof the rule and also as usual there are alot of
>> grey shades between white and black.  Some companies seem to have  
>> tremendous
>> difficulty to be good open source citizens - but they throw some free
>> hardware into the crowd.  Not enough to satisfy the demand and usually  
>> only
>> a few key people are really able to take advantage of that.
>>
>> Otoh many if not most important and highest quality contributions over  
>> the
>> years have come from hobby hackers, so in the end the lack availability  
>> of
>> modern hardware is making everybody suffer.  Meanwhile the importance of
>> Linux as OS for MIPS is continuing to rise ...
>>
>> I hear similar complaints from other, mostly embedded architectures  
>> such as
>> ARM.  But that's not an excuse - this problem wants some remedy.
>>
>> But let's also look at the options you have right now:
>>
>>  o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.
>>    Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.
>>  o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some the  
>> Linksys
>>    WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.
>>  o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree (working in  
>> cleaing
>>    the patches) would be another reasonably priced option.  Generally  
>> you
>>    may want to look at the list of platforms supported by
>>    http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have friendly price  
>> tags.
>>    Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a bit quirky  
>> to
>>    use.
>>  o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on the order  
>> of
>>    $100.  I have not idea this is true or still true for the new owner  
>> of
>>    Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.
>>  o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space Qemu is a
>>    really nice and well performing system which also is rapidly  
>> improving.
>>
>>   Ralf
>>
>>
>

Re: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[John W. Linville]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 09:08:10AM +0100, Imre Kaloz wrote:
> Well, a year before or so I've tried to get a Godson based unit (a  
> Municator) with no luck.. I wasn't able to find a contact regarding the  
> Lemote, but if you can, I would be also interested in working on this  
> platform.

Yes, I am in a similar situation.  How do I get one?

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville@tuxdriver.com

Re: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Ralf Baechle]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 10:07:49AM +0800, Songmao Tian wrote:

> Have you heard of loongson? the current version of the cpu is 2e,
> while 2f will be released this year, which will clocks at 1GHz,
> delivering rather high perfermance:)
> 
> Fulong is a miniPC now based on loongson 2e. you can get one for free
> if you make recognized contribution to the system:)
> 
> 
> Some introduction here:
> http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/

But I have two Loongsons :-)

  Ralf

Re: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Imre Kaloz]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:41:49 +0100, Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>  
wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 10:07:49AM +0800, Songmao Tian wrote:
>
>> Have you heard of loongson? the current version of the cpu is 2e,
>> while 2f will be released this year, which will clocks at 1GHz,
>> delivering rather high perfermance:)
>>
>> Fulong is a miniPC now based on loongson 2e. you can get one for free
>> if you make recognized contribution to the system:)
>>
>>
>> Some introduction here:
>> http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/
>
> But I have two Loongsons :-)
>
>   Ralf
>

Lucky bastard :D


Imre

回复: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Songmao Tian]

Woo, you are so lucky:), I asked one of my boss and he confirms that


2007/3/22, Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 10:07:49AM +0800, Songmao Tian wrote:
>
> > Have you heard of loongson? the current version of the cpu is 2e,
> > while 2f will be released this year, which will clocks at 1GHz,
> > delivering rather high perfermance:)
> >
> > Fulong is a miniPC now based on loongson 2e. you can get one for free
> > if you make recognized contribution to the system:)
> >
> >
> > Some introduction here:
> > http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/
>
> But I have two Loongsons :-)
>
>   Ralf
>

Re: 回复: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Fuxin Zhang]

You should take it as that Ralf's acception of our gifts is our luck:)

Songmao Tian wrote:
> Woo, you are so lucky:), I asked one of my boss and he confirms that
>
>
> 2007/3/22, Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>:
>> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 10:07:49AM +0800, Songmao Tian wrote:
>>
>> > Have you heard of loongson? the current version of the cpu is 2e,
>> > while 2f will be released this year, which will clocks at 1GHz,
>> > delivering rather high perfermance:)
>> >
>> > Fulong is a miniPC now based on loongson 2e. you can get one for free
>> > if you make recognized contribution to the system:)
>> >
>> >
>> > Some introduction here:
>> > http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/
>>
>> But I have two Loongsons :-)
>>
>>   Ralf
>>
>
>
>
>

Re: 回复: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Ralf Baechle]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 12:59:16PM +0800, Fuxin Zhang wrote:

> You should take it as that Ralf's acception of our gifts is our luck:)

As you've experienced my hands break hardware within 5s ;-)

  Ralf

Re: 回复: Mips SOC, Linux

[Fuxin Zhang]

Hello everybody,
     If some of you is interested in getting one loongson mini-PC, you 
can write to sales@lemote.com.Please give us a brief introduction of 
your background, your detailed mail address and phone number(for delivery).
    Loongson box is presently sold at a promotion price $200. And as 
Songmao has said, we can consider donation or cheaper price for 
recognized contribution.  But up to now we have produced only 1000 set 
and there are no so many left, so we may be not able to satisfy 
everyone. Next batch will be available in one to three months.
    Thank you.

Best Regards,
Yours sincerely, Fuxin Zhang
CEO of Lemote Inc. Ltd.

Ralf Baechle wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 10:07:49AM +0800, Songmao Tian wrote:
>
>   
>> Have you heard of loongson? the current version of the cpu is 2e,
>> while 2f will be released this year, which will clocks at 1GHz,
>> delivering rather high perfermance:)
>>
>> Fulong is a miniPC now based on loongson 2e. you can get one for free
>> if you make recognized contribution to the system:)
>>
>>
>> Some introduction here:
>> http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/
>>     
>
> But I have two Loongsons :-)
>
>   Ralf
>
>
>
>
>