How to tell if FreeBSD can be installed?

B

balanga

How could I determine if FreeBSD could be installed on some device? It currently uses Android but am unsure of the actual processor.

How would I find out? Is there an app I could get from the Play Store which would tell me? There is no 'About device' option.
The device in question is a GTMEDIA player.
 
balanga said:
How could I determine if FreeBSD could be installed on some device? It currently uses Android but am unsure of the actual processor.

How would I find out? Is there an app I could get from the Play Store which would tell me? There is no 'About device' option.
The device in question is a GTMEDIA player.
Click to expand...
You cant run FreeBSD on that. So dont bother.
 
1. Check out The Hardware notes, including supported HW
2. Else find out, what processor the device has, and if that one is supported by FreeBSD. If so, it still could use "some" adaption to create some individual FreeBSD version that runs on it, since you not only need the CPU to function alone. Maybe somebody else already created a functioning one, but then it was almost certain it already would be part of the supported HW list.
3. Just try.
 
I have been scouting around for RK3399 TV Boxes with Android for possible conversion.
RK3399 is not a popular platform for TV Boxes. Amlogic S905 is. Unsupported though.

Once you find a TV Box with RK3399 that has possible support for Panfrost you are left with Audio.
ESS 8xxx is not well supported. So dreams of an Arm TV Box running FreeBSD is unrealistic. Not impossible though.(use USB audio)

None of the TV boxes I scouted have a UART populated so you need to solder or clip on leads.
To break out of Android on eMMC/SPI a console helps. Alot. You could say required. Plus you must prepare you own intervening u-boot to bust the nut.
 
I use u-boot and it bakes in DTB via FIT method. I build slave ports for boards. It builds from Linux device tree. FreeBSD loader will say DTB found from EFI.
But even among RK3399 u-boot there are different boot styles. FriendlyElec/Firefly/Radxa.
No real board profile for STB'es on RK3399 so you are left messing with generic and evb u-boot builds.
 
MrBSD said:
You cant run FreeBSD on that. So dont bother.
Click to expand...
Google says 4-core ARM Cortex-A35 while Amlogic is the entire SoC brand. So the chipset that surrounds the CPU rules out FreeBSD by specific undocumented architecture outside the processor?

What are the demands of a kernel running on this device? It could be a read-only factory system. Then it's over.
 
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