"biff...@yahoo.co.uk" <biff...@yahoo.co.uk>: Aug 30 05:57AM -0700
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:
https://github.com/bifferos/bb
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
https://github.com/bifferos/bb/tree/master/tiny/files
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:
https://github.com/bifferos/biffboot
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.
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