Alfa Now Making 64Mb Hornet Boards

[PineDominator]

I have seen some hornet boards with 64MB instead of 32MB around the web

man I wish this would have been the standard 8 months ago.

it still has 8MB of flash

this could help with memory intensive programs like sslstrip.

EDIT:

I ordered one and will test once I get my hands on it probably 15 days from now.

I realy think this will give sslstrip and other memory hogs the extra umph needed, I always assumed that it wasnt cpu but ram that was causing these programs to bogg down. I measured about 14MB of space required for installing sslstrip so that means that at any one time a huge chunk of the sslstrip process is in swap space on the usb drive witch is verry slow

Edited September 16, 2012 by petertfm

[itsm0ld]

Any chance you can link the place you ordered from? OR PM with it if you prefer. Man 64MB would be nice!

[Sebkinne]

I am horribly sorry to make this.. well, less spectacular.

We have had 64mb versions for a while now. Sadly, Alfa's UBOOT caps the flash size at 8mb, so while RAM improves.. well you get get the drift.

They may have started making a modified version of UBOOT which I assume if they are selling it - we will see.

Best Regards,

Sebkinne

[PineDominator]

I am horribly sorry to make this.. well, less spectacular.

We have had 64mb versions for a while now. Sadly, Alfa's UBOOT caps the flash size at 8mb, so while RAM improves.. well you get get the drift.

They may have started making a modified version of UBOOT which I assume if they are selling it - we will see.

Best Regards,

Sebkinne

in any case both of my pineapples are still 32MB, even with just 8mb flash alot can be offloaded to the usb, like packages.

what do you mean alfa caps the flash size? is the chip able to hold more?

Edited September 17, 2012 by petertfm

[Sebkinne]

in any case both of my pineapples are still 32MB, even with just 8mb flash alot can be offloaded to the usb, like packages.

what do you mean alfa caps the flash size? is the chip able to hold more?

Basically we got their 64mb devices a few months back. The current firmware works well on them and they even have 32mb of RAM instead of the 16MB they had before. The issue is the bootloader, ie not something on the OS level. The bootloader is hardcoded to a flash size. As far as our dev boards go, uboot was not modified to allow for flash sizes above 8mb. There are hacky fixes which will most likely brick your device / require a jtag programmer.

It is entirely possible that Alfa has modified the bootloader.

Actually, according to Data Alliance:

This is the 64MB version of Hornet board - the higher-end version. Flash: 8MB

http://www.data-alli...s-AR9331/Detail

They actually put it in bold so that it stands out a bit. It isn't really "high-end" ;)

So this confirms what I just mentioned. Even though there is 64MB, FLASH is capped at 8MB and RAM is capped at 32MB. While that does mean log files etc can be saved to volatile memory for a longer time - this was never an issue. The issue was the ~1MB of persistent actual space we have on the device.

As you have purchased the devices, from what I can see it isn't worth it. Heck, I have two and have messed with the bootloader. It just isn't worth it right now.

I suggest (unless you really want to try) you try to cancel your order and save your money :)

Best Regards,

Sebkinne

[PineDominator]

Basically we got their 64mb devices a few months back. The current firmware works well on them and they even have 32mb of RAM instead of the 16MB they had before. The issue is the bootloader, ie not something on the OS level. The bootloader is hardcoded to a flash size. As far as our dev boards go, uboot was not modified to allow for flash sizes above 8mb. There are hacky fixes which will most likely brick your device / require a jtag programmer.

It is entirely possible that Alfa has modified the bootloader.

Actually, according to Data Alliance:

http://www.data-alli...s-AR9331/Detail

They actually put it in bold so that it stands out a bit. It isn't really "high-end" ;)

So this confirms what I just mentioned. Even though there is 64MB, FLASH is capped at 8MB and RAM is capped at 32MB. While that does mean log files etc can be saved to volatile memory for a longer time - this was never an issue. The issue was the ~1MB of persistent actual space we have on the device.

As you have purchased the devices, from what I can see it isn't worth it. Heck, I have two and have messed with the bootloader. It just isn't worth it right now.

I suggest (unless you really want to try) you try to cancel your order and save your money :)

Best Regards,

Sebkinne

Thanks for clearing that up Seb:-) I'll see what I can do, actually the last time I delt with data alliance they were a pain to get the shipping cost fixed, overpaid $30, they did finally fix the issue after a few weeks

Edited September 17, 2012 by petertfm

[Sebkinne]

Thanks for clearing that up Seb:-) I'll see what I can do, actually the last time I delt with data alliance they were a pain to get the shipping cost fixed, overpaid $30, they did finnally fix the issue after a few weeks

No worries. I remember that they were a bit of a pain for some people.

I hope you get things resolved :)

Best Regards,

Sebkinne

[Arch_Angel]

I ordered my DIY Pineapple hardware from another place i found off Google Shopping, i think i paid a lil over 40$ for just the router. I cant remember where since ive had it for a couple months.

[Aprizm]

Actually, according to Data Alliance:

http://www.data-alli...s-AR9331/Detail

They actually put it in bold so that it stands out a bit. It isn't really "high-end" ;)

Best Regards,

Sebkinne

they changed it back to 16mb so was this an error all along?

[Sebkinne]

they changed it back to 16mb so was this an error all along?

Hardware wise no.

Software wise, yeah. The bootloader shipped with the boards doesn't support anything higher than we use for the pineapple.