Non-x86 development platforms.

[Combuster]

Besides the mandatory panda, beagle and lilypad, I once picked up this SH4-based system as being an interesting architecture choice. I have yet to find a working shop link on it though so it might still be a bubble.

[guyfawkes]

I will add this Arm devboard. heres the data sheets. price starts at $99.95

[Combuster]

Ok I'll stick to the Dreamcast then

[Brynet-Inc]

The D-link DAP-1350 is a small (..pocket sized) AP/router with a Ralink RT3052F SoC, it has a MIPS32 24KEc core clocked at 384MHz. The RT3052 has a 802.11 b/g/n radio as well as an Ethernet switch, It also supports USB OTG (..on the go) which is register compatible with EHCI.

The DAP has 32MB of RAM, 8MB of flash, 1 physical Ethernet port, and a USB port.

There is source for u-boot, the Linux kernel, and FreeBSD (..kernel bits are upstream). The RT3052 is technically supported in OpenWrt, but not the DAP-1350 platform.

It's apparently common, but the flash memory is partitioned, this means you have a chance of restoring the firmware assuming you only write where you're supposed to.. restore can be done using TFTP, serial UART (..soldering required), and HTTP (..this is neat, u-boot + uIP + a tiny HTTP server with an HTML form).

Developing for this platform is possible, but information is kind of disorganized.. same goes for a lot of non-x86 platforms. I have found datasheets for the SoC, which covers most of the hardware, but redistribution is an issue.

It cost me less than $60 at Walmart, and I was only looking for an AP, not a new toy.

[Jezze]

Combuster: I had actually read your Dreamcast barebones. It was really good.

[ACcurrent]

I recently heard of this really cheap microcomputer using arm. I think it was called raspberry pi. I may be wrong, but I think it has an SoC.

[Rusky]

Raspberry Pi is a $25 ARM system designed to run Linux. It sounds like a really fun development platform, but it's not quite out yet...

[OSwhatever]

Why not use qemu. For debugging qemu is often faster than testing on a real HW.

For ARM you can use the PB-A8 board emulator in qemu which supports a range of CPU configurations.

One CPU I would love to test is Xtensa, which is gaining in markets where traditionally ARM has been successful.

With qemu you have them all.

[Brynet-Inc]

If nobody feels like moving this to the Wiki, it would be a good candidate for a sticky topic. People looking for platform suggestions/prices and hints for where to find documentation.

[JackScott]

We could even create a new subforum that's just full of stickied topics that contain wonderful information as yet missing from the wiki. Sort of a "best of" osdev.org.

Just an idea.

[Combuster]

We've barely had one day of time to collect suggestions. I expect that berkus would post his own archive of interesting devices at some point.

That said, I think second hand consoles are the easiest way to get your hands on some strange architectures. Besides if you or any of your subclasses gets bored, you can still use them as just that: consoles.