Post by reidmefirst on Mar 29, 2011 10:48:38 GMT 7
Hey All -
I bought an N4200 recently and I'm looking to hack it before I start relying on it. I have a few macs in the house, among other computers, and the AFP support appears to be seriously broken
I'm thinking to do an Ubuntu or Debian install but I wonder if anyone else with one of these NASes wants to pool resources.
I've taken mine apart and noted some oddities that separate it from the N5200. I snapped a photo of the motherboard here:
www.readingfordummies.com/blog/archives/Photos/Hacking/N4200-motherboard.JPG
At the top, there are two headers (one is 10-pin, the other is 8-pin). In the middle of the two it says "VGA". Standard VGA is generally 12-15 pin ribbon cable. I know DVI is 18-pin, so I kind of wonder if this isn't DVI? I don't have a logic analyzer yet and I don't know exactly what a DVI signal would look like, I wonder if anyone knows of a standard pinout for motherboard DVI without a header? I have a spare PCIe x1 video card but it doesn't output anything when I boot the NAS with the card installed.
There is a serial port shown in the bottom left corner of the photo above (just to the left of the "n4200 ver:0.2" silk screen). I managed to remove the Afaya flash disks and changed the boot parameters to give me a serial console on that port. Unfortunately the RX on that port isn't quite right...I can see the serial output (grub bootloader and the kernel boot messages) but I can't type anything into it. I've tried a few different terminal programs and no luck with anything. I have to beep it out and see if it's connected to its RS232 driver in some weird way.
If anyone is interested to put heads together in hacking the N4200 into something more useful, drop a line or send me a PM.
Thanks,
Reid
I bought an N4200 recently and I'm looking to hack it before I start relying on it. I have a few macs in the house, among other computers, and the AFP support appears to be seriously broken
I'm thinking to do an Ubuntu or Debian install but I wonder if anyone else with one of these NASes wants to pool resources.
I've taken mine apart and noted some oddities that separate it from the N5200. I snapped a photo of the motherboard here:
www.readingfordummies.com/blog/archives/Photos/Hacking/N4200-motherboard.JPG
At the top, there are two headers (one is 10-pin, the other is 8-pin). In the middle of the two it says "VGA". Standard VGA is generally 12-15 pin ribbon cable. I know DVI is 18-pin, so I kind of wonder if this isn't DVI? I don't have a logic analyzer yet and I don't know exactly what a DVI signal would look like, I wonder if anyone knows of a standard pinout for motherboard DVI without a header? I have a spare PCIe x1 video card but it doesn't output anything when I boot the NAS with the card installed.
There is a serial port shown in the bottom left corner of the photo above (just to the left of the "n4200 ver:0.2" silk screen). I managed to remove the Afaya flash disks and changed the boot parameters to give me a serial console on that port. Unfortunately the RX on that port isn't quite right...I can see the serial output (grub bootloader and the kernel boot messages) but I can't type anything into it. I've tried a few different terminal programs and no luck with anything. I have to beep it out and see if it's connected to its RS232 driver in some weird way.
If anyone is interested to put heads together in hacking the N4200 into something more useful, drop a line or send me a PM.
Thanks,
Reid