Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:48:42 -0600 (MDT) From: "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com> To: mario.mania@gmail.com Cc: freebsd-mips@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: New in the list Message-ID: <20080324.094842.1645216744.imp@bsdimp.com> In-Reply-To: <7882d4790803240739p3ec3266ei97efe02878d25a6@mail.gmail.com> References: <7882d4790803240739p3ec3266ei97efe02878d25a6@mail.gmail.com>
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In message: <7882d4790803240739p3ec3266ei97efe02878d25a6@mail.gmail.com>
"Mario Augusto Mania" <mario.mania@gmail.com> writes:
: Hi
:
: My name is Mario Augusto Mania, i'm from Brazil, and work with freebsd
: since 2001. Nowaday, I use a small wireless radio/bridge like a
: Zinwell G-120, a small hardware with a RTL8186 microcontroller. In the
: www.realtek.com.tw, i saw that this microcontroller is a RISC MIPS
: R3000 Compatible. I use a linux basead firmwares in these devices,
: but, like a freebsd-lover, I want to run a FreeBSD inside these
: "boxes" :).
: Is FreeBSD-mips project what i need? How is the project status? Anyone
: run on theses devices?
In theory, FreeBSD could run on this box. I say in theory because a
lot of work would need to happen to make this a reality. First, you'd
need to write the r3k pmap code. There's plenty of places that have
similar code, so that shouldn't be a huge deal. You'd need to
implement drivers for the pieces of hardware you'd like to use.
Fortunately, I believe these are mostly documented.
However, there are some issues with doing this. It isn't a true R3000
core. See http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Lexra for details on why.
http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Realtek_SOC gives good information
about the Realtek chip and pointers to datasheets.
So there's no FreeBSD firmware, today, that can run on it. It would
be a bit of a project to make it work on the device, but would be fun.
The FreeBSD/mips port is primarily targeting mips32 and mips64
compliant processors (both r1 and r2), but has the infrastructure
needed to support older MIPS hardware if someone were to take the time
to do it.
Warner
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