nullroute | hosts | soekris

Model: Soekris net4511
CPU: AMD Élan SC520 (Am586DX)
RAM: 64 MB
Storage: IDE CompactFlash, 32 MB originally (upgraded to 2 GB)

Not quite a fully-featured host, but an interesting piece of hardware nonetheless.

Based on AMD Élan SoC – a 586-based system-on-chip – the net45xx series were single-board computers much like the Raspberry Pi and similar, but primarily meant for use as routers, given their dual Ethernet ports and the option to route antenna ports for a Wi-Fi PCMCIA card. (The highest reported throughput I'd seen mentioned on forums was around ~65 Mbps.)

The net4511 has no VGA output; its custom BIOS reroutes text-mode input/output through the serial port. It can network-boot using PXE, which is one of the few ways to install an OS (other than resorting to a VM with the USB CF card reader attached).

Originally this unit ran MS-DOS with LEMAbridge; at the moment it runs OpenBSD 4.4, as that was the easiest to net-install.

comBIOS ver. 1.27  20041122  Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Soekris Engineering.

net45xx

0064 Mbyte Memory                        CPU 80486 100 Mhz 

Pri Mas  TS2GCF133                       LBA Xlt 971-64-63  1957 Mbyte

Slot   Vend Dev  ClassRev Cmd  Stat CL LT HT  Base1    Base2   Int 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
0:00:0 1022 3000 06000000 0006 2280 00 00 00 00000000 00000000 
0:09:0 104C AC50 06070002 0107 0210 10 3F 02 A0000000 020000A0 10
0:18:0 100B 0020 02000000 0107 0290 00 3F 00 0000E101 A0001000 11
0:19:0 100B 0020 02000000 0107 0290 00 3F 00 0000E201 A0002000 05

 1 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.

NSC DP83815/DP83816 Fast Ethernet UNDI, v1.03                                  
Copyright (C) 2002, 2003 National Semiconductor Corporation
All rights reserved.

Pre-boot eXecution Environment  PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000  Intel Corporation

CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 00 24 C4 BC 64  
PXE-E53: No boot filename received                                             

PXE-M0F: Exiting MacPhyter PXE ROM.

No Boot device available, enter monitor.

comBIOS Monitor.   Press ? for help.

> help
comBIOS Monitor Commands

boot [drive][:partition] INT19 Boot
reboot                   cold boot
download                 download a file using XMODEM/CRC
flashupdate              update flash BIOS with downloaded file
time [HH:MM:SS]          show or set time
date [YYYY/MM/DD]        show or set date
d[b|w|d] [adr]           dump memory bytes/words/dwords
e[b|w|d] adr value [...] enter bytes/words/dwords
i[b|w|d] port            input from 8/16/32-bit port
o[b|w|d] port value      output to 8/16/32-bit port
run adr                  execute code at adr
cmosread [adr]           read CMOS RAM data
cmoswrite adr byte [...] write CMOS RAM data
cmoschecksum             update CMOS RAM Checksum
set parameter=value      set system parameter to value
show [parameter]         show one or all system parameters
?/help                   show this help

> show

ConSpeed = 19200
ConLock = Enabled
ConMute = Disabled
BIOSentry = Enabled
PCIROMS = Enabled
PXEBoot = Enabled
FLASH = Primary
BootDelay = 2
BootPartition = Disabled
ShowPCI = Enabled
Reset = Hard

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