LinkSys NSS4000 NAS w/ RM7000+PMON2000

Guys,

I've been away from MIPS camp for long time since I have
no good modern MIPS HW at hand.  I found that one of
LinkSys
NAS product named NSS4000 is a very good candidate to
port NetBSD.  PLS check out http://www.tmk.com/blog/
?p=8
It has 600MHz RM7035C and a variety of modern PCI
peripherals.  The most interesting aspect is that it has
PMON2000 bootloader and HW provides serial console
connector
to control.  I guess it's a kind of rare NAS box which
equips L2
cache inside.  I hope the product would gain successful
share
and would be replaced with bettter processor like MSP8150
(re-badged RM9150) in some future.

Toru Nishimura/ALKYL Technology

On 5/13/07, Toru Nishimura <locore64alkyltechnology.com> wrote:
> Guys,
>
> I've been away from MIPS camp for long time since I
have
> no good modern MIPS HW at hand.  I found that one of
LinkSys
> NAS product named NSS4000 is a very good candidate to
> port NetBSD.  PLS check out http://www.tmk.com/blog/
?p=8
> It has 600MHz RM7035C and a variety of modern PCI
> peripherals.  The most interesting aspect is that it
has
> PMON2000 bootloader and HW provides serial console
connector
> to control.  I guess it's a kind of rare NAS box which
equips L2
> cache inside.  I hope the product would gain successful
share
> and would be replaced with bettter processor like
MSP8150
> (re-badged RM9150) in some future.

Hmm, nice machine. Dual gigabit ethernet controllers and 4
disks...

Do you know if you can netboot it similar to the NSLU2? I
was going to
try to find an NSLU2 to play with, but I'm really not smart
enough to
do hardware hacking.

This thing could make a really nice box. It's still a little
pricey though.

Andy

Andy Ruhl sez;

> Hmm, nice machine. Dual gigabit ethernet controllers
and 4 disks...
> 
> Do you know if you can netboot it similar to the
NSLU2?

PMON2000 is a feature rich bootloader made by the man who
ported the world first real BSD Unix to R4000.  The port was
called
"pica".

http://www.opsycon.se/
pmonmain

Started from the original PMON, PMON2000 has been
acumulating
many features by importing code from NetBSD and OpenBSD.  I
would
not be surprised seeing NASS4000 even boots ELF kernel on
FFS
filesys.

> This thing could make a really nice box. It's still a
little pricey though.

The 64bit OS capable machine could be made in lower price
and I feel
puzzling indeed about the wrong combination of HW.

- PM8172 is SysAD32 system controller.  By replacing it with
other
  "industory grade" one like Marvell Discovery LT
you can buy
  133MHz/166MHz SysAD64 frontside bus w/ DDR333 memory and
  buildin GbE.
- Having RM9120/9220(dual E9K core) could be instant win
(but
  PMC-Sierra abandond the entire RM9000 line)
- then moderate replacement choice would be RM9150.

Toru Nishimura / ALKYL Technology