Is the Raspberry PI Zero W a better choice to use with OpenBSD? Is there OpenBSD support for the onboard WIFI?
I chose the CHIP device because of the neat hardware package, CPU, RAM, NAND, WIFI and USB all on one board. I was able to take the device out of its package, use my cell phone charger cable to plug it into my PC and was literally able to start development! Within a few minutes I had the WIFI configured and was using SSH network connectivity. The drawbacks that I see with the CHIP device are in the supply chain. Production is in batches that have already been paid for. I am never confident that I will see my order on any kind of schedule. The business model seems to be to sell the CHIP device at a very low cost in the hopes that someone will develop a blockbuster device and use the CHIP Pro for production. I do however prefer OpenBSD to Linux and have used OpenBSD on my servers since about release 3.6. I am trying to evaluate the possibility of using OpenBSD on the CHIP device and whether the effort is worth it. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gray Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2017 8:10 AM To: Stephen Graf <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: OpenBSD for NTC CHIP On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 10:49:50AM -0700, Stephen Graf wrote: > Is there any work on preparing OpenBSD for the Next Thing Company CHIP? > > <https://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#introduction> > https://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#introduction > > > > I have built one project using this device with Debian Linux, but I > much prefer OpenBSD. > > > > To be useful the distribution would have to support WIFI with the > built-in Realtek RTL8723BS device (SDIO interface) and have support for GPIO and I2C. > The Raspberry PI Zero W is similar in concept to the NTC CHIP. > > > > I have another two CHIP devices on order and if I am lucky, might have > them within a month. I also have some time and a little expertise to > work on a distribution. > > > It does not have a sd/mmc device just raw flash. It isn't clear if they ever finished upstreaming their patches to U-Boot either. If you can build a version of U-Boot that supports their flash configuration and EFI and then put it on the device via FEL/USB you should be able to install a root filesystem onto a USB drive with some kind of networking attached via USB as well. Or just get a less horrible system.
