Stub page for reporting on DreamPlugTesting efforts. If you are testing or building a FreedomBox on this hardware, please report your experiences here.

Information from GlobalScale on installing Debian: https://code.google.com/p/dreamplug/downloads/list

They distribute a Debian (Lenny) filesystem tarball that you can either boot off of and then copy to the internal memory card, as their instructions tell you to, or you can just drop directly on the internal memory card after opening up the plug. Since opening the plug is very simple, I went with that procedure.

I can confirm that dist-upgrading the provided lenny image to squeeze works without difficulty and the plug still boots. I haven't tried upgrading past squeeze yet.

--IanSullivan

Here's what I learned playing with one today:

The boot loader preloaded identifies itself as U-Boot 2011.06-02334-g8f495d9-dirty (Mar 01 2011 - 06:57:05)

This is GPL'd software but I cannot find the sources.

I tried Debian's u-boot for the Guruplug. It complained about the lack of NAND, and was unaware of the Dreamplug's meg of SPI flash; this was expected and should be easily correctable. What I didn't expect was that it wouldn't cope with the Dreamplug's USB, and this means that I couldn't boot off of the internal microSD card. I did not attempt to boot off of the network or eSATA.

The most recent u-boot source available from plugcomputer.org (http://plugcomputer.org/index.php/us/resources/downloads?func=showdown&id=79) does even worse, simply printing this on the serial console and then locking up:

SoC:   Kirkwood 88F6281_A0
DRAM:  512 MB
NAND:  No NAND device found!!!
0 MiB

Next I attempted to use the factory U-Boot to boot the Debian squeeze kernel, assuming that this would work as well. It did not. It seems to have frozen right after

[    0.266395] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 2 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
[    0.266845] serial8250.0: ttyS0 at MMIO 0xf1012000 (irq = 33) is a 16550A
[    0.577409] console [ttyS0] enabled

The plug comes with a kernel called 2.6.33.6, and a source tarball at http://code.google.com/p/dreamplug/downloads/detail?name=linux-2.6.33.6.tar.bz2&can=2&q= though this tarball is not the same as the mainline Linux release with the same version number. The source builds and provides a usable image, though a bit smaller than the one shipped with the device.

The third problem is the same as with the Guruplug; there appears to be no free software available to control the WiFi device in Master/AP mode. For more information see

• http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2010/05/msg00064.html

• http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2010/05/msg00081.html

• http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2010/05/msg00082.html

--ClintAdams

Hardware revisions and firmware versions

Different revisions have been sold, which are shipped with different hardware components (in particular the wifi chip)

TODO : document version 8, 9, 10 etc.

Note : the following draws from a post on the list : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2012-November/004765.html

Serial numbers may indicate different revisions of the hardware :

Vendors may update the uboot firmware before selling units.

Here's some indications of the uboot versions found in units :

TODO document what Default means above

CategoryFreedomBox