[gentoo-embedded] About sh hardware (and where we can find it).

[gentoo-embedded] About sh hardware (and where we can find it).

[Mikle Kolyada]

Hello guys! 

I am interesting in support exotic arches for gentoo. As for
sh i want play with it and join sh team, and help. But i even could not
find place, where i can buy it. I looking for lantank, but there are no
even in Japan. I don't want to use an emulation So, if you know
hardware/places where i can buy it, tell me more please!

Re: [gentoo-embedded] About sh hardware (and where we can find it).

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Tue 29 Apr 2014 00:06:34 Mikle Kolyada wrote:
> I am interesting in support exotic arches for gentoo. As for
> sh i want play with it and join sh team, and help. But i even could not
> find place, where i can buy it. I looking for lantank, but there are no
> even in Japan. I don't want to use an emulation So, if you know
> hardware/places where i can buy it, tell me more please!

you can probably still get dreamcasts on ebay :), but those lack storage, so 
you end up having to do everything over nfs which is slow (even w/ethernet).

i don't think you can buy lantanks anymore.  even when i picked them up, they 
were being replaced by newer models and moving away from SuperH.  you can 
maybe check out this page:
	http://iohack.sourceforge.jp/tanks/

i do have a dev board that i never ended up using you could have.

honestly though, the fastest SH4 ever released is dog slow and they never 
really added a lot of RAM (the lantanks were like 266 MHz and only 64 MiB of 
RAM).  you'd have a better time i think running in QEMU.

even if you do manage to procure some hardware, i'm not sure learning SuperH 
is worth your time.  it's a dead architecture.  the people making the silicon 
(renesas) have stopped investing in SuperH ... their new "SuperH Mobile" line 
of processors really have an ARM core and just take their old peripherals 
(serial/spi/etc...) from SuperH and bolt them onto the ARM.  the people 
maintaining the kernel/toolchain ports have put it into maintenance mode.

if you're interested in getting into the embedded space, then i'd recommend 
looking at either ARM or MIPS.  the former is super easy to get into -- just 
buy a Samsung Chromebook 2 for $320 :).  there is an older model for $250, but 
you really want the new one performance/spec wise.

other ideas perhaps worth exploring: grab some of the new embedded arches that 
lack Gentoo and do a new port to it.  microblaze is in the kernel and the 
toolchain and is itching for someone to do the footwork :).
-mike

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