VIA Sprinboard: Alternative to Raspberry Pi - working with FBSD CURRENT?

[O. Hartmann]

Recently,
I stumbled into this board, which looks promising:

http://www.viaspringboard.com/products.html

Does anybody know whether the offered hardware (chipse, CPU, WiFi
chipset) is supported by FreeBSD?

[Ian Lepore]

Post by O. Hartmann
Recently,
http://www.viaspringboard.com/products.html
Does anybody know whether the offered hardware (chipse, CPU, WiFi
chipset) is supported by FreeBSD?

It's not currently supported, and apparently documentation for the SoC
isn't available (the "support" tab on the WonderMedia site isn't
selectable, never a good sign).

Boards that are comparable in price and processing power that are
supported by FreeSBD to varying degrees include the BeagleBone, the
Wandboard, and to a lesser degree, the Cubieboard (which has sketchy
documentation, but a good bit of reverse engineering has been done to
support it).

-- Ian

[O. Hartmann]

On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:55:44 -0700

Post by Ian Lepore

Post by O. Hartmann
Recently,
http://www.viaspringboard.com/products.html
Does anybody know whether the offered hardware (chipse, CPU, WiFi
chipset) is supported by FreeBSD?

It's not currently supported, and apparently documentation for the SoC
isn't available (the "support" tab on the WonderMedia site isn't
selectable, never a good sign).
Boards that are comparable in price and processing power that are
supported by FreeSBD to varying degrees include the BeagleBone, the
Wandboard, and to a lesser degree, the Cubieboard (which has sketchy
documentation, but a good bit of reverse engineering has been done to
support it).
-- Ian

Thank you very much.

Oliver

[Thomas Mueller]

Post by O. Hartmann
Recently,
http://www.viaspringboard.com/products.html
Does anybody know whether the offered hardware (chipse, CPU, WiFi
chipset) is supported by FreeBSD?

I went to that URL and noticed that the WiFi chip was Atheros AR9271, same as one I have and not currently supported by FreeBSD but maybe supported in NetBSD-current and Linux.

I couldn't tell on my own whether the rest of the system could run FreeBSD or NetBSD, but from Ian Lepore's response, it doesn't look good.

Better off with Raspberry Pi?

Tom

[O. Hartmann]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 09:52:18 +0000

Post by Thomas Mueller

Post by O. Hartmann
Recently,
http://www.viaspringboard.com/products.html
Does anybody know whether the offered hardware (chipse, CPU, WiFi
chipset) is supported by FreeBSD?

I went to that URL and noticed that the WiFi chip was Atheros AR9271,
same as one I have and not currently supported by FreeBSD but maybe
supported in NetBSD-current and Linux.
I couldn't tell on my own whether the rest of the system could run
FreeBSD or NetBSD, but from Ian Lepore's response, it doesn't look
good.
Better off with Raspberry Pi?
Tom

Well, as Ian suggested, there is this promising alternative
"Wandboard". The reason is I'm looking for something small and with
performance for routing/gatewaying and playing around with as micro
server. I'm not so convinced by the speed of Raspberry Pi and
especially it's amount of RAM available. Another issue is the 100
MBit/s ethernet NIC, Wandboard seems to come with (regretably only one)
GBit LAN socket.

I haven't finally made up my mind and any decission, Wandboard with
4-core CPU plays in another price region than a simple Raspberry Pi. At
this very moment, I have no comparison to any of them.

Oliver