[U-Boot] Any good __LOW COST__ MIPS SBC suggestion please

[Balaji Ravindran]

Hi Florian and Jerry,

Thanks for the inputs, i was actually going through the choices, and yea as
suggested Lemote seems to be a nice choice for me, and was wanting to
see distributors in the US / US shipping options.,

also i had a look at the Linksys routers that you guys mentioned, but one
question, aren't the commercial products different from those of development
versions?, I mean, when i opened up my WRT 610N, i could see that, the main
section of my router board is sealed in a steel casing(guess
heat dissipater), though i can get the specs online,

but does it have JTAG ports for debugging support? usually in production
versions, the odm's doesn't provide JTAG right? well, i couldn't see one
though.

Just curious, will we be able to get development boards of Linksys WRT
SKUs?

Thanks

Balaji R

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli at gmail.com>wrote:

> Le samedi 6 mars 2010 21:42:52, Jerry Van Baren a écrit :
> > Hi Balaji,
> >
> > Balaji Ravindran wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'm hunting for a __LOW COST__ MIPS/PPC SBC, something like TS-7200(but
> > > it is for ARM). Could anyone please suggest me a good one, that you
> guys
> > > have come across.
> > > My purpose is only for general driver development, and developing some
> > > MIPS / PPC porting skills.
> > >
> > > Also another true intension is, i have couple of 2600$$ BDI3000 JTAG
> > > debuggers for PPC and MIPS, lying idle in my office, and want to make
> > > some good use out of it :).
> >
> > Lucky dude.  :-)
> >
> > > I was looking in the "Boards" directory to hunt for any MIPS based SBC
> > > boards, but found it hard to search.
> > >
> > > It will be nice, if its an SBC, and it has atleast 64/128 MB SDRAM, and
> > > 16/32 MB flash, USB support, (i can;t expect a super fast processor,
> but
> > > a decent one like 166/200 Mhz should be ok)
> >
> > Two off-the-wall thoughts would be to use QEMU (the ultimate in low
> > cost) or a MIPS-based wireless/firewall/router.  A fair number of the
> > cheap ones use versions of the Realtek SoC processor, which is MIPS
> > architecture:
> >    <http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Realtek_SOC>
>
> This is actually a really bad choice, unless you start using Realtek WiSoCs
> (RT30xx/RT28xx). RTL8186 and RTL8651B are using a Lexra core, which is
> famous
> for not having 4 patented instructions (lwl, lwr, swl and swr), which
> therefore requires a different toolchain. Also the Linux support is just
> non-
> existent. Finally they use a brain-dead bootloader called ROME which only
> allows a couple of actions to be performed.
>
> More seriously, buy a WRT160NL or WRT54GL from Linksys, which is equally
> cheap
> as those Realtek devices.
>
> >
> > As another possibility, you may be able to pick up a Lemote computer
> > which uses the Loongson processor:
> >    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson>
> >    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemote>
>
> This is a much better choice :)
> --
> Cordialement, Florian Fainelli
> ------------------------------
>