• FreecomFSG3

1. Freecom FSG-3

Freecom FSG-3 is Intel XScale based consumer NAS device. OpenWrt supports this device as of Kamikaze 7.07. Freecom has shown a friendly attitude towards the opensource community and they're willing to help us with few restrictions (no additional warranty replacements due to hacked devices, no extra tech support questions due to customizations and no unfair advantage provided to competitors).

1.1. Hardware

• Intel XScale IXP422 at 266MHz with hardware encryption
• 64MB RAM and 4MB flash
• Four port Realtek RTL8305SB switch configured as one WAN port and three LAN ports. Uses two XScale NPEs (eg. not VLANs like most WLAN APs)
• NEC USB 2.0 on PCI-bus. Four external (two front, two back) and one internal (empty pads on PCB)
• VIA VT6421A IDE controller on PCI-bus. One external eSATA, one internal PATA. Empty pads on PCB for secondary SATA bus
• Internal HDD. Various sizes available (80G, 160G, 250G, 400G, 500G)
• Empty Mini-PCI socket on PCB for WLAN option. Stock firmware supports only Marvell based cards.
• Power button, Unplug button and Reset button. On PCB there's SYNC button pads
• Six user controllable leds (HDD, power, USB, USB unplug, WAN, WLAN)
• Small approx. 3cm * 3cm fan

• JTAG connector (pin-out available, http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FSG3/HomePage and on http://www.openfsg.com)

• TTL serial connector and other port configurations available at http://www.openfsg.com and on http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FSG3/HomePage

• Winbond W83782D environment monitoring chip with three temperature sensors and fan RPM monitoring+control
• Onboard RTC with removable battery on I2C bus

1.2. Software

• FSG-3 uses RedBoot bootloader and runs bigendian SnapGear Linux 3.1.6 based on 2.4.27 kernel. Freecom told they're going to upgrade to 2.6 kernel during 2006.

• There's various add-ons and GPL download on http://www.openfsg.com

1.3. Status

• 2.6.16 patched and running (based on SlugOS 3.10-beta)
• Network interfaces and switch work (0,1,2=LAN, 3=LAN/NPE, 4=WAN)
• MAC addresses for network interfaces correctly read from flash
• SATA and PATA disks work (with slightly modified Fedora Core 4 patch from VIA)
• USB ports work with stock USB drivers
• WIFI card on Mini-PCI slot detected by kernel, and madwifi drivers confirmed working for Atheros cards. (Also tested with Intel, but haven't tried loading drivers yet)
• Freecom registered proper ARM Linux machine ID for FSG-3 (1091)
• I2C, RTC, sensors and FAN rpm control working with stock drivers

• Full tutorial available for installation without requiring hardware modifications

1.4. ToDo

• Enable buttons (GPIO's known, need to adapt NSLU2 code)
• Leds (Connected to expansion bus, needs some new code to support)
• Hardware crypto (Driver downloadable from Intel but does it work in Little-Endian mode?)

1.5. Notes

• Holding reset button while powering on enables recovery mode. FSG requests IP using bootp and tries to load zImage-recovery with tftp from bootp server.

  • If you want to test OpenWrt without flashing your FSG, a good way is too net boot this way and to choose "ramdisk" as target image. Don't forget to set "mem=64M" on the command line in your kernel config, as it is not passed by redboot when booting from the network.

• RedBoot incorrectly reports Coyote machine ID to Linux kernel

• Fan is noisy. It can be slowed down using software but it causes higher internal temperatures.
• At least 250GB model came with internal Samsung 7200rpm 8MB PATA HDD. I don't know if other models are PATA or SATA. -- The FSG has the possibility to use either pata or sata disks (2 SATA and 1 PATA connector) One SATA is always used for the external SATA connector. Whether PATA or SATA is used internally (and therefor which connector is mounted) is dependent on the price/performance/quality of the PATA or SATA disks at the time of production. The disks can come from any manufacturer, again depending on best price/performance/quality at the time of production. (rbar)

1.6. Links

• http://www.nslu2-linux.org/ Linux on the ARM-based NASes

• Official Freecom support site: http://www.openfsg.com

• Sales page: http://www.freecom.com/ecProduct_detail.asp?ID=2347

• Resellers: US and Europe(UK)

• Internal photos: http://sukkamehulinko.romikselle.com/fsg3/

• Thread on OpenWrt forum: http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=5828

• Installation tutorial: http://www.openfsg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=22663#22663