Chapter 1. Overview

The KuroBox is a small, embedded computer based on a PowerPC MPC8241 CPU. It comes from a company in Japan and is resold in North America by a company in Texas called Buffalo Technology. The main english website for the KuroBox is kurobox.com.

This document was created to outline information about my experiences with this box. I don't have a PC running any form of Windows at home, therefore I am not able to install an image and work with my KuroBox as described in the instructions that came with the device. I also don't have a Mac running Linux (or similar) from which to generate a base filesystem. Following the steps in the forums for updating the box without the use of a Windows PC did not leave me with a system that was as up-to-date as I had wanted.

I started by creating my own cross-development toolchain (from x86 to PowerPC 603e). Using that toolchain I prepared a completely new base installation (glibc) and used Busybox for the userspace tools. Once that was done I did some testing to make sure everything would work, then installed my new image and rebooted.

This document describes all the steps necessary to take a brand-new, just assembled KuroBox from nothing to having a fully up-to-date user-space environment with nothing more than an x86 Linux PC and the sources to a few code packages. The resulting environment on the KuroBox is running the latest shared libraries, ready to execute programs cross-compiled on the x86 development machine in any of C, C++, Objective-C, or Fortran languages. The x86 Linux cross-development PC is ready to cross-compile programs for the KuroBox. Programs compiled on the x86 machine can be transfered to the KuroBox and executed.

I hope you find this information useful but please see the disclaimer. It worked for me but in no way do I guarantee it will work perfectly for you. If you'd like to get in touch with me you can send a message to (the word ordering is reversed but the letters in the words are in the right order) ca dot vtnet at kuro456.