The netgear SC101 is a two drive IDE/PATA SAN system. It is not usable as network share through FTP, SMB/CIFS or NFS, but needs a Windows installed driver to make it appear as local drive. It uses a proprietary SAN over IP technology from Zetera called ZSAN. No drivers for Linux or any other than Windows exists. The Windows drivers are quite nice and run on Vista. It can reach about 6.5MB/s.

The device supports RAID-1 but even though 2 drives are in the same box, the mirroring is done over the network, so drains the performance further. Another slightly disappointing feature is it uses its own file system. You cannot take out the drive, and use it in another housing and read the data.

Off topic, I like the comparable Ximeta NDAS technology better: Linux support, choice of file system and better performance, but I would probably like OpenWRT even more, if it can fit in the meager 2MB/8MB.

Version/Model	Launch Date	S/N	OpenWrt Version Supported	Model Specific Notes
v1	-	-	-	No Fan Support
v2	-	-	-	Fan Support

NOTE: Anything not included in model specific notes, or where a short comment couldn't be included on the notes.

Version	CPU	Ram	Flash	Network	USB	Serial	JTag
V1	TNETV2005GGW@125MHz	8MiB	2MiB	1	No	Yes	?
V2	TNETV2005ZGW@125MHz	8MiB	2MiB	1	No	Yes	?

There is a 3 second bootwait, and the tftp command exists in the bootloader. Dhcp is disabled by default due to BOOTCFG=m:f:"vxWorks" environment variable. Manually changing BOOTCFG=a:nf:"vxWorks" forces dhcp starts right after minimal boot completed and auto-setup IPA and IPA_GATEWAY variables according to network settings. By using tftp it is possible to store files on flash or load ELF(?)executable directly to RAM and run it.

Boot with default settings:

Minimal POST completed...     Success.
PSPBoot1.0 rev: 0.10.4
(c) Copyright 2002-2003 Texas Instruments, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Current mac address = 00-18-4d-3a-2c-cb
Already exist available mac address...

Press ESC for monitor... 1

(psbl) help
ls                boot              df                cp
tftp              printenv          setenv            unsetenv
help              fmt               reboot            dm
cat               rm                oclk              defragenv
fa                info              version
(psbl)
(psbl) version

PSPBoot1.0 rev: 0.10-4
Build: using [gcc-2.96 19990621 [[oldwiki:vxworks|VxWorks]] 5.4] at [10:29:56 May  5 2005]
Compiled for RDK006 board in Big Endian mode.

Optional modules included ('+') or not ('-'):
 +tibinary +elf +gzip +ffs +tftp -ftp +dhcp -pcapp
(psbl)
(psbl) info

CHIP ID: AVALANCHE-D (0x2), REV: 0x1

EMIF runnimg at Full rate of the processor.
Processor running in Big Endian mode.
Processor clock is Synchronous to internal bus (VBUS) clock.
(psbl)
(psbl) ls
FlashDiskDump for /
     drwxrwxrwx 0:0 a:  0 i:0 Jul 27, 1999  2:17:40am       2 etc
     drwxrwxrwx 0:0 a:  0 i:0 Jul 27, 1999  2:17:40am       2 bin
     drwxrwxrwx 0:0 a:  0 i:0 Jul 27, 1999  2:17:40am       2 ttyS
      rwxrwxrwx 0:0 a: -1 i:2 Jan  1, 1970 12:00:00am 1395397 vxWorks
(psbl)
(psbl) df
Mounted File Systems: 1
Slot: 0, Total: 1900544, Used: 1395488, Available: 505056 (in bytes)
(psbl)
(psbl) printenv

MEMSZ           0x00800000
FLASHSZ         0x00200000
MODETTY0        9600,n,8,1,hw
MODETTY1        9600,n,8,1,hw
PATH            /bin:/ttyS
CPUFREQ         125000000
SYSFREQ         125000000
PROMPT          psbl
IPA             192.168.1.1
IPA_SVR         192.168.1.100
SUBNET_MASK     255.255.255.0
BOOTCFG         m:f:"vxWorks"
HWA_0           00-18-4d-3a-2c-cb
(psbl)
(psbl) fa
Current Flash Allocation:

section :   PSBL, base : 0xb0000000, size :     103008 bytes
section :    ENV, base : 0xb0020000, size :      65536 bytes
section :    FFS, base : 0xb0030000, size :    1900544 bytes

no unallocated space left on flash

(psbl)boot

The attachments below show an interrupted boot with the bootloader, an uninterrupted boot into VxWorks (with no drives or network attached), and test of tftp with dhcp enabled.

bootloader.txt vxworks.txt dhcp_tftp.txt

→ hardware.button

The SC101 has only 1 button.

BUTTON	Event
Reset	reset

Architecture:	MIPS
Vendor:	Texas Instruments
Bootloader:	PSPBoot ?
System-On-Chip:	TNETV2005ZGW / TNETV2005GGW
CPU/Speed	125 Mhz
Flash-Chip:	29LV160CBTC-90G (MX) Both V1/V2 - 2 MiB
RAM:	M12L64322A (ESMT) on V1 / EM63825TS-6G (EtronTech) on V2 - 8 MiB
Ethernet:	1893BFLF (ICS)
Serial:	Yes
JTAG:	No

Model	Top	Bottom
Ver 1
Ver 2

Note: This will void your warranty!

• Opening this device is quite simple.

→ port.serial general information about the serial port, serial port cable, etc. On the J4 20 pin header, pin 10, 12, 14 (square pin is pin 1) Settings 3.3v with 9600 8N1

   0V signal   1  2  3.3V signal
 3.2V signal   3  4  3.3V signal
   0V signal   5  6  3.3V signal
 3.2V signal   7  8  3.3V signal
 3.2V signal   9 10  RxD
       Reset  11 12  GND
 3.2V signal  13 14  TxD
         GND  15 16  3.2V signal
   0V signal  17 18  GND
         GND  19 20  GND

My 3.3V phone USB serial cable had its Tx floating pulled up to 3.3V, and if I connected before powerup to pin 10 Rx, the device would not power up. I had to apply power first, then quickly connect pin 10, just in time to press Esc in the 3 second boot wait. If I was too slow, I had to wait a minute for the full VxWorks boot, and type reboot. Upon reboot, the already connected Rx did not matter.

→ port.jtag general information about the JTAG port, JTAG cable, etc.

Not known atm.

1. as a beginner, you really should inform yourself about soldering in general and then obtain some practical experience!

Passive Heat Reduction

Source comes from oldwiki → http://wiki.openwrt.org/oldwiki/openwrtdocs/hardware/netgear/sc101 All not completely ported over to the new wiki, mainly did this to add thoughts and resources to this device, also added information/images on version 1.

Product Page - Netgear SC101

Linux Drivers - sc101-nbd

OpenWRT Forum - Idea of sc101-nbd package for OpenWRT, letting OWRT share the sc101 via smb?

Mounting in Linux

Review of the device