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Archive for July, 2023

FreeBSD on Orange Pi 5 Plus

July 17th, 2023

Hardware Specifications

Soc
SoC ModelRockchip RK3588 (8nm LP process)
SoC ArchitectureARMv8-A 64-bit, 8-core,  big.LITTLE
4xCortex-A76, 4xCortex-A55
and separate NEON co-processors
CPU FrequencyA76 : 2.4GHz, A55 : 1.8GHz
GPUArm Mali-G610/Built-in 3D GPU
NPUEmbedded NPU supports INT4/INT8/INT16/FP16, with up to 6Tops
Memory
LPDDR4 RAM4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB (LPDDR4/4X)
eMMC 5.1 NAND Flash32GB/64GB/256GB eMMC (optional) up to 400MB/s
SPI NOR FlashQSPI Nor FLASH: 16MB/32MB
Internal Interfaces
M.2 M-KeyM.2 slot supporting 2280 NVMe SSD
M.2 E-Key M.2 slot that supports Wi-Fi6/BT modules
External Interfaces
HDMI2 x HDMI (OUT), 1 x HDMI(IN)
Ethernet2 x PCIe 2.5G Ethernet ports (RTL8125BG)
USB Type-CUSB 3.0 Type-C(DP)
USB2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0
microSD1
Others
PWM FANyes
RTC Batteryyes
PowerUSB Type-C 5V/4A

FreeBSD 14.0 RELEASE does not support the RK3588 SoC, but thanks to Tianocore EDKII UEFI it is possible to use different operating systems, including FreeBSD.
It was necessary to add a USB 2.0 driver for ACPI mode and fix the operation of the UART driver in this mode.


And now FreeBSD can be run on OrangePi 5 Plus from an SD card.
The OS itself does not yet have a driver for an SD card and eMMC, but the system can be installed on a USB FLASH or NVMe SSD.

HDMI, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, NVMe, Ethernet will work.

You can try installing FreeBSD on OrangePi 5 Plus.

  1. Download the bootable SD card image.
  2. Burn it to SD.
  3. Insert the SD card into the device and turn on the power.
  4. After the OS starts, log in as root and run bsdinstall to install on an SSD or USB HDD.

FreeBSD-aarch64-14.0-RELEASE-OrangePi-5P-20231209.img.xz

OPNsense-23.7.8-aarch64-OrangePi-5P-20231125.img.xz

Boards, SoCs, Vendors