FreeBSD on Soekris hardware

About the Soekris hardware and this page.

Søren Kristensens company Soekris Engineering produces a range of computers aimed at the embedded device market.

On this page I collect information, tips, ideas and other wisdom about putting FreeBSD on the soekris computers.

Information, links, useful ideas etc. are all more than welcome, email me! If you really want to make it easy for me: send me diffs against the HTML page or entire new HTML pages.

NET4xxx

Stuff which pertains to all the NET4xxx models we have seen so far.

• About power supplies etc.
• Concept for a battery-backup

NET45xx

The NET4501, NET4511 and NET4521 all use the same central chip, the AMD ElanSC520, and are therefore treated the same.

• Configuring a FreeBSD kernel.
• Timestamping external signals
• Hooking a LCD display up

Random bits of information:

• The reset switch latch output is connected to SC520 PIO15, a low on SC520 PIO19 will clear it. The latch is a RS latch, connected so if you keep PIO19 low you can read the switch directly, in case you don't want the latch function.

NET4526

The NET4526 is a smaller version of the 4501 with less features and a few new ones.

• GPIO connection according to Soren:

  pin no    function            SC520 pin
    1        +3.3V
    2        +5V
    3        GPIO0 / I2C SDA  -> PIO7  (AF10)
    4        GPIO1 / I2C SCL  -> PIO8  (AF9)
    5        GPIO2            -> PIO11 (AC9)
    6        GPIO3            -> PIO21 (AF6)
    7        GPIO4            -> PIO22 (AF5)
    8        GND
  

• LM75ADP temperature connector connected to SDA/SCL on address 0x48.
• Source code to read LM75 temperature sensor

NET4801

The NET4801 uses the National Semiconductor SC1100 Geode CPU and a PC87366 SuperI/O. AMD has recently bought the Geode product line from NatSemi, so look to their web-page for manuals.

If you put a disk in your NET4801, check the temperature with the env4801 program below and consider using "smartmontools" from the ports collection to check the disks temperature. Some of the modern high-performance 2.5" disk get can get pretty hot.

• Configuring a FreeBSD kernel.
• GPIO connection of Dallas/Maxim 1-wire device
• Program to monitor Temperature & Voltage

Random bits of information:

• The reset switch is connected to an RS-latch, the output goes to GPIO18 and a low on GPIO47 resets the latch. Holding GPIO47 low effectively disables the latch and the reset button can be read "in real time".

NET4826

The NET4826 is a smaller version of the 4801 with less features and a few new ones.

• GPIO connection according to Soren:

  pin no    function            SC1100 pin
    1        +3.3V
    2        +5V
    3        GPIO0 / I2C SDA  -> AB2D/GPIO13 (AD23)
    4        GPIO1 / I2C SCL  -> AB2C/GPIO12 (AE23)
    5        GPIO2            -> GPIO0 (B22)
    6        GPIO3            -> GPIO2 (B21)
    7        GPIO4            -> GPIO3 (A22)
    8        GND
  

• JP6 is the USB port.
• Source code to read LM75 temperature sensor.

Thanks...

Gregory Neil Shapiro, for FreeBSD 4-stable info.