Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:49:02 +0100 From: Bruce M Simpson <bms@incunabulum.net> To: freebsd-embedded@freebsd.org Subject: Low cost ARM9 SoC board - NSD100/NCB3AST Message-ID: <484A679E.7010106@incunabulum.net>
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Hi,
I have just made a speculative purchase of an ARM9 based device, the
Emprex NSD-100 (pictures of inside case):
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/04/29/emprex-nsd-100-p2p-download-engine/1
The UK cost ex vat is ~35 UKP retail per unit. 8MB flash, 64MB DRAM, 2x
USB2 ports and 1x 10/100 PHY.
In other markets (eg. Australia) the AgeStar NCB3AST may be available,
which has SATA (!), and 1 of the two USB2 ports on the SoC is configured
as a device port. Though it's a bit more expensive:
although there are pads for several resistors on the bottom.
A friend and I popped the top off the NSD100 as soon as it came in.
There is some RF shielding which needs removed to get full access. There
is a single 6-pin header for the UART, and apparently no JTAG, although
there are pads for several resistors on the bottom.
The box definitely runs Linux of some description although the serial
lines seem very noisy.
A pinout which gives me the least amount of garbled text is:
VCC 1 2
3 4
TX 5 6 GND
...but TX appears to be connected to the +3.3V line. My MAX232 wants 5V,
but only 3.3V is available. I didn't bother checking this with a scope...
It seems to be 38400 8-N-1, same as the tinyhack guy says for the
NCB3AST. Drops into BusyBox on boot, and we can just make out the
messages from their Linux about it being the "FA526" CPU.
Both the NSD100 and NCB3AST use the Star Semiconductor Corp STR9104
system-on-chip. The NSD100 allegedly uses U-Boot firmware.
Star on their website claim that the STR91xx has been purchased for use
in various vendor designs:
http://www.starsemi.com/vEng/index1.html
...their product line appears to be positioned competitively with Intel
XScale IXP.
The STR91xx appears to incorporate a licensed FA526 ARM9 IP core from
Faraday Tech. Corp. I believe the on-chip network controllers are
implemented in a similar way.
I don't see any download links for the code which Emprex must provide,
as they ship Linux in their product, to conform with the GPLv2 license.
This guy claims to be working on opening up the Linux port:
http://tinyhack.com/2008/05/18/hacking-ncb3ast-day-1/
There is a patch set for Linux 2.4 which adds STAR_STR9100 SoC support,
and might serve as a jumping off point for starting to port FreeBSD to
this device:
http://tinyhack.com/files/patch-from-kernel-2.4.36.4-to-star.bz2
dmesg for a similar device is here:
http://svn.openfoundry.org/usert2500/star/star_log.txt
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