Re: build a hack box of choice?

Hello there

there are at least a few initiatives like you're searching for,
i.e. from seattlewireless.net (Samsung S3C4510B), hri.sf.net
(Conexant 84200/newer samsungs), actiontec router, ucrouter.ru
(also Samsung S3C4510B) and so on

all of them try to port linux to SOHO routers(*), which are
cheap but have the drawback of changed hardware revisions
so often that one could get a unit with a different processor
than the one already ported to :^|

I'm with hri.sf.net guys: some info on porting is on-line,
some is published on the list (we really need to put all
on-line, sf.net list archive is simply horrible!)... some
is still undocumented ...

our goal is to make the ports AND PUT THE INFO ON HOW WE
DID IT available. the boards we're tweaking into have
serial UARTs available, as JTAG connectors

about books, I read one from O'reilly (Building Embedded
Linux I think) but it is more on how to build your own
toolchain(**) than on how to diggle with different hardware
to start with. I'm in search of a book on _hardware_
and how to change linux kernel to accomodate it (in case
anyone knows such a book, I'd like to know)

http://vega.soi.city.ac.uk/~es728/pdf/aleph.pdf
as a nice doc about how to port linux to a new ARM based
board. that helped me to solve the uncompressing part
of linux boot loader (so I get my first cx84200 port
with ramdisk to SMC7004VWBR rev.1 hardware)

about a cheaper board than soekris, try www.pcengines.ch,
Geode 233 for US$140 (US$98 in 480 quantities). soekris
is about US$185-199 for a AMD ELAN 133, which seems too
much to me ( remember you'll need to add wlan card,
power supply and case -- that's why HRI project is so
interesting ;-) )

Cheers
!3runo

(*) ucrouter.ru actually build their own board. their
rom can run on many samsung s3c4510b based boxes!

(**) I recomend snapgear.org toolchain. it is available
for various embedded systems

Scott Serr wrote:
> With all the talk about which new box might be hackable, it seems 
> obvious that there is a need for something cheap but with the 
> capabilities of the expensive Soekris boards.
> 
> I work as a software engineer (IT department doing mostly Java and web 
> stuff) of an ASIC company.  I know very little about hardware, but I 
> work with friends that know hardware and know the industry and the OEM 
> players.
> 
> My question is...  what needs to be in a box to not just make it 
> hackable, but be made to hack and put Linux on it?  Also, is there 
> current hardware (WRT54?) that may have an OEM much like all the vendors 
> that used the WL11000 based boards?
> I'm wondering if a rough business model of catering to the Linux-hack 
> market would work.  Of course I am counting all the applications of the 
> hacked boxes, otherwise the quantity probably wouldn't be enough.