SATA to CF -- great for embedded DFly firewalls

[Oliver Fromme]

Dmitri Nikulin wrote:
 > How many CF-based embedded devices does DragonFly actually run on?

The CF card just looks like an ATA disk to the OS, so
it should just run fine.  I have a bunch of ATA-to-CF
converters which I use for diskless applications, they
appear as /dev/ad0.

I also have an SBC (single-board-computer) with built-
in CF slot, it also appears as /dev/ad0 and works out
of the box.  (It has no disks and no fans, that's why
I use it as a stand-alone mp3 player built into a real
hifi case.  If you're interested, it's a PCM-5820 from
Advantech, see this URL:
http://www.advantech.com/products/Model_Detail.asp?model_id=1-1TGZL8
They also have models with multiple NICs suitable as
diskless + fanless routers etc.

 > I'd be happy to use it but I wonder what advantage it has over
 > NetBSD in single-CPU embedded devices. I'm certainly interested
 > in building a few embedded devices sometime soon.

The main advantage of NetBSD in that area is that it
runs on many non-i386 processors, such as ARM, which
are very common in small embedded devices (and cheap
if ordered in large quantities).  However, there are
also i386-based ones, such as the Advantech ones, and
I don't see a reason why you shouldn't run DragonFly
on them.

Best regards
   Oliver

PS:  WRAP is another popular example of such boards:
http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap.htm

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd

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