Bifferboard update

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biff...@yahoo.co.uk

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Aug 30, 2021, 8:57:25 AM8/30/21
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Hi All,

I've got no idea who's reading this group these days, (probably nobody) however I've still got a fairly large number of Bifferboards and I was testing them all this week-end.

I have about 30 that are working perfectly.  I also have a few of the dual-USB types (I think about 5) and about a dozen turbo-NAS cards, which include SATA/PATA interfaces (same hardware).  I also have a number of cases, UK PSUs and serial cables.

I was thinking of letting the working ones go for £10 each + Postage, if interested please get in touch.  Unfortunately I can't offer any warranty on them.

I have reinvigorated the github page readme:
So it's a bit more applicable to my current desktop Linux (I'm using Mint these days and it's been a bit of a challenge getting these older toolchains running on modern systems but it's thankfully still possible).

I've also added a Vagrant image that you can use to help build the firmware.  I'm concentrating on my 'tiny' distribution that fits in 1MB Flash because it's the most flexible and my SATA NAS devices only have 1MB flash so it's needed for them.  All based on 2.6.37.6 kernel because that's the one that I applied all my various 'hacks' to.  Later kernels get too large for 1MB, so I recommend using tftp boot if you want to use them and just not bothering with on-board flash at all.  You can still use the i386 binaries from earlier OpenWrt versions with such systems, but the OpenWrt system (including Lua) is still too heavy for limited space like this unless you go USB-root.

I'm in the process of adding additional custom firmwares via the tiny 'profile' system

That tree is somewhat behind my latest efforts, I've added a few more projects since then.

Please note that the Biffboot bootloader is now open-source and can be found in another github project:
Note that I haven't compiled it in some time, so you're on your own until I need to do that again, but I'm pretty sure it's all there.  It might be of academic interest to someone still, key features that differentiates it from other bootloaders:
- Used NASM (I hated the gcc assembler syntax)
- Written in C++ (most bootloaders are C)
- It can be used in closed-source applications
- Self-decompressing into RAM
- Really tiny (less of an issue in 2021)

kind regards,
Biff.

Adam Pribyl

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Aug 30, 2021, 12:15:34 PM8/30/21
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I do, but my "product" is EOL. There are still some references to BB
hardware on some project pages, sometimes to old domain bifferos.co.uk...

Adam Pribyl

biff...@yahoo.co.uk

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Aug 31, 2021, 5:47:46 PM8/31/21
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I've allowed bifferos.co.uk to lapse, it's just bifferos.com now, pointed to the google site.  Google sites migrated the site to a new format and it's now a complete mess.
Yuck!  They also moved the files over to my google storage so some are not accessible any more.

So I'm slowly moving the content over to the github wiki, but I suspect I'm not going to have time to do it all.  A few hours at the w/e and I only managed five pages.  Hopefully I'm capturing the important stuff.

thanks,
Biff.
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