PC Board / System on Chip

B

bufo333

Hello,

I am looking to see if anyone has any experience or recommendations for a system on chip tiny form factor raspberry pi like device possibly something that runs x86 and has good support for the BSD's?

I am looking for a micro pc, something with WiFi or Ethernet and a HDMI port built in, basically something similar to the pi that has solid BSD support that people have had experience with.


I am looking forward to your suggestions!
 
vigole said:
ARM or i386?
Supported Platforms

In case of ARM:
FreeBSD/ARM Project

RPi 2/FreeBSD 11 is doing well.
FreeBSD/ARM on Raspberry Pi

FreeBSD on the RaspberryPi 3:
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arm/2016-March/013342.html
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arm/2016-March/013309.html

Footnote:
Select the right forum for new threads
Other Architectures [forum]
Click to expand...


Yes, I was looking for a Raspberry Pi like form factor that was a Tier 1 platform. I have played with enough tier 2 platforms such as sparc64 that I don't want to fight to get something working. I was really hoping for something from Intel. I heard there was some really good small quad core Intel boards not much bigger than the Pi.
 
Minnowboard Turbot is supported on FreeBSD. It has an Intel E3826.
There is a quad core version coming out soon.

Drawbacks:
GPIO not supported on X86-amd64. Driver required
Cannot boot FreeBSD from MicroSD card.

There are many more supported boards...
 
I also like the Jetway Pico-ITX boards. They have MiniPCIe slots and mSATA.
The N2930 board runs FreeBSD, not sure about the newer N3150 offering.

The problem is once again GPIO's not supported on x86 without writing a GPIO chip driver.

The FreeBSD gpioctl(8) software is superb, but GPIO hardware support is lacking on Intel-AMD.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You could use an Intel NUC computer, and unscrew the motherboard from its enclosure if you have your own application. It's a real PC and FreeBSD 10.3 runs very nicely, except perhaps the SD-CARD driver mmcsd(4). It and geli(8) do not mix at all.
 
Phishfry said:
I also like the Jetway Pico-ITX boards. They have MiniPCIe slots and mSATA.
The N2930 board runs FreeBSD, not sure about the newer N3150 offering.

The problem is once again GPIO's not supported on x86 without writing a GPIO chip driver.

The FreeBSD gpioctl(8) software is superb, but GPIO hardware support is lacking on Intel-AMD.
Click to expand...
Can you please post the Instruction sets of Jetway N2930 Board or the contents of /proc/cpuinfo ? I am trying to find out if the Intel mobile Celeron N2930 has invariant TSC or not.

Thank you!
 
Code: 
root@Mushkin:~ # cat /var/run/dmesg.boot
Copyright (c) 1992-2016 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE-p1 #0 r306420: Thu Sep 29 03:40:55 UTC 2016
    root@releng2.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
FreeBSD clang version 3.8.0 (tags/RELEASE_380/final 262564) (based on LLVM 3.8.0)
VT(vga): resolution 640x480
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU  N2930  @ 1.83GHz (1833.39-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin="GenuineIntel"  Id=0x30678  Family=0x6  Model=0x37  Stepping=8
  Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x41d8e3bf<SSE3,PCLMULQDQ,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,TSCDLT,RDRAND>
  AMD Features=0x28100000<NX,RDTSCP,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x101<LAHF,Prefetch>
  Structured Extended Features=0x2282<TSCADJ,SMEP,ERMS,NFPUSG>
  VT-x: PAT,HLT,MTF,PAUSE,EPT,UG,VPID
  TSC: P-state invariant, performance statistics
real memory  = 2147483648 (2048 MB)
avail memory = 1952952320 (1862 MB)
Event timer "LAPIC" quality 600
ACPI APIC Table: <JetWay Em10xcPo>
WARNING: L1 data cache covers less APIC IDs than a core
0 < 1
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs
FreeBSD/SMP: 1 package(s) x 4 core(s)
random: unblocking device.
ACPI BIOS Warning (bug): 32/64X length mismatch in FADT/Gpe0Block: 128/32 (20160527/tbfadt-650)
ioapic0 <Version 2.0> irqs 0-86 on motherboard
random: entropy device external interface
kbd1 at kbdmux0
module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (vesa, 0xc1295360, 0) error 19
random: registering fast source Intel Secure Key RNG
random: fast provider: "Intel Secure Key RNG"
vtvga0: <VT VGA driver> on motherboard
cryptosoft0: <software crypto> on motherboard
acpi0: <JetWay Em10xcPo> on motherboard
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
unknown: I/O range not supported
cpu0: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
cpu1: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
cpu2: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
cpu3: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
atrtc0: <AT realtime clock> port 0x70-0x77 on acpi0
atrtc0: Warning: Couldn't map I/O.
Event timer "RTC" frequency 32768 Hz quality 0
hpet0: <High Precision Event Timer> iomem 0xfed00000-0xfed003ff irq 8 on acpi0
Timecounter "HPET" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 950
Event timer "HPET" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 450
Event timer "HPET1" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
Event timer "HPET2" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
attimer0: <AT timer> port 0x40-0x43,0x50-0x53 irq 0 on acpi0
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
Event timer "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 100
Timecounter "ACPI-safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 850
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0x408-0x40b on acpi0
 
bufo333 said:
Hello,

I am looking to see if anyone has any experience or recommendations for a system on chip tiny form factor raspberry pi like device possibly something that runs x86 and has good support for the BSD's?

I am looking for a micro pc, something with WiFi or Ethernet and a HDMI port built in, basically something similar to the pi that has solid BSD support that people have had experience with.


I am looking forward to your suggestions!
Click to expand...
bufo333 said:
Hello,

I am looking to see if anyone has any experience or recommendations for a system on chip tiny form factor raspberry pi like device possibly something that runs x86 and has good support for the BSD's?

I am looking for a micro pc, something with WiFi or Ethernet and a HDMI port built in, basically something similar to the pi that has solid BSD support that people have had experience with.


I am looking forward to your suggestions!
Click to expand...
You can think supermicro X10SDV-F motherboard with Xeon D processor.
 
I am late to this party, but recently received a Qotom machine for firewall duties, and have been happy with it.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KJG04B4

There are MANY variants... bare bones and populated, quad-core and dual-core CPUs, 4 or 2 NICs. I chose this one because it came with 2 GB RAM and 64 GB SSD. Buying a cheaper bare-bones version plus the parts wouldn't have saved me anything, but if you have RAM and storage that would be a good option. (BTW the RAM was Samsung and the SSD was Crucial.)

FreeBSD 11 with the generic kernel seemed to autodetect all the hardware just fine.
 
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