Implement support for a MikroTik RouterBoard (mips32)

[Jakub Jermář]

Implement support for one of the RouterBoards such as MikroTik RouterBoard RB435G.

Details

RouterBoard RB435G is an extensible board that can serve as a single-board router and be a central part of your home network. It features MIPS single-core CPU, 256MB of RAM, micro-SD card slot and 3 ethernet ports. The machine is well documented and can be used as a model hardware for the network usability of HelenOS. Basic support for RB435G is within the reach of a single trimester work.

HelenOS supports the mips32 architecture, but so far has been ported only to MIPS R4000 and MIPS 4Kc CPUs. The RouterBoard has a MIPS 24K processor so this project will require some kernel code modifications.

What Gains and Benefits will this bring?

RouterBoard RB435G would be a good demonstrator for HelenOS to show that HelenOS is capable of a full-fledged routing functionality.

Difficulty

Medium to High

Required skills

A successful applicant will need to have very good skills in programming in the C language and the ability to learn how to drive hardware based on various information sources (official documentation, source code of other operating system projects). Low-level kernel programming experience is a plus.

Documentation

• ​RB435G Homepage
• MIPS manuals on HelenOS wiki
• ​MIPS32 24K Processor Core Family Software User’s Manual
• ​MIPS Classic Processor Cores on Imagination Technologies web
• ​RB354 page on OpenWRT web

Possible mentors

HelenOS Core Team, Jakub Jermar