Re: build a hack box of choice?

Bruno, I looked at the links you mentioned... the new hardware is 
definitely not as easy as the USR2450 hack that got me into all of this.

I'm interested in learning more...  would you recommend subscribing to 
the HRI list?  Which projects seem to be getting closer to success?  
 From your last couple of posts on HRI it looks promising...

-Scott

Bruno Lopes F. Cabral wrote:

> 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.
>
>
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