Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

http://www.tekmote.nl/epages/61504599.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61504599/Products/CFL-008

The specs are not impressive (my phone is faster and has similar resolution), but given it's MIPS-based - pretty cool stuff.

At that price you could get the macbook pro.

For some reason, I was expecting this to be cheaper than a PC...

At that price you could get the Fuel in a non-basic configuration.

I'm not amused. It's a PC (standard AMD chipset) with a MIPS CPU attached via HyperTransport instead of an Athlon, which runs Linux and feels no different than running Linux on any other hardware... In the 90s you bought a MIPS because it was fast and ran IRIX, after 2000 you bought a MIPS because it ran IRIX, now there is no reason to buy a MIPS unless you want a worse Linux/Android experience than on x86/ARM hardware.

What they don't seem to tell you on that page is the 3A is a quad core. Even the single core 900MHz Loongson runs pretty nice and the laptops built on that are much cheaper.

wow! i also thought its not that pricey, i wonder if hamei already got his..

yeah, i just hope someday a company will produce exciting computers using MIPS and UNIX together again..
so if there is a new MIPS based laptop using non PC bus system, which OS you want it to run? we know IRIX cannot be ported anymore

If you want to run something close to IRIX on a non-IRIX/non-MIPS system, you should consider getting your hands on an IA-64 system. I can confirm that, with SGI QuickTransit (MIPS<=>IA-64 binary code translation suite), one can execute IRIX binaries in a cut-down IRIX 6.5.27 environment on top of Linux IA-64.

I don't think there exists now an OS, which would give you any additional benefits over what Windows-Linux-MacOSX provide you and wouldn't run on a PC or would give you any additional benefits on non-PC hardware. I would love to see some nice hardware for Icaros Desktop , but it's not going to happen because it won't run better on anything than Intel CPUs, because the all the JIT compilers are optimized for Intel hardware (look at the RAZR i benchmarks - Android for ARM is here for four years and it is worse than Intel in only one benchmark - JavaScript). But I'm still waiting for the Natami - paired with Icaros Desktop it would give a modern OS with the ability to seamlessly run Amiga programs.

ah i see, thanks for this info!! so hmm i remember i read somewhere that irix binaries on netbsd? so how about latest netbsd on latest mips boards? then use those irix binaries and tweak them as discussed on that article? but yeah, still love to see a walking IRIX if you have the chance to carry around an SGI O2, will you carry one?

hmmm yeah good point.. wow! icaros desktop and natami indeed looks promising but looks like your'e an Amiga use before right? waaah android, did develop before, really dont like java

how about minix? i like his concept of microkernel and self healing, will really give us a reliable machine right? hmm can imagine minix 3.. on a mips system ^^

Our very own Miod has skillfully ported OpenBSD to Loongson 2E/F. The older single core laptops and other Lemote products will run OpenBSD fantastically.
I don't think 3A is supported yet.

this was nowhere near complete to be able to run commercial applications, and it got dropped in 6.0 anyway

Waiting waiting waiting .... for stuff we already had the seeds of twenty years ago. Free market capitalism is great, absolutely wonderful.

oh! then this would make the loongson book interesting then hmm the older model would be cheaper then..

ah i see.. irix really hardcore hehe

hehe so still up north? down here really annoying about those island and japanese conflict.. i hope all will be well soon..

There's no conflict ... just informing Japan to not rock the boat.

hahaha indeed so where did the hundreds of Chinese shipping boat from the news gone? to Troy? or lost in Bermuda triangle

While I enjoy reading about OS architecture I really try to think about OSes in terms of what I can do on them and not how they were implemented. MINIX is a great OS to teach system programming (when I was at university we were using MINIX to do our assignments like implement memory allocations algorithms or writing simple drivers). I've read about Tanenbaum vision to use it for cheap computers, but for some reason it didn't happen - probably there was no advantage over Linux.

As for the MIPS. Maybe someone finally comes up with a PSION 5mx successor. Android runs already on the MIPS so it would be mostly a matter of integrating everything and designing a good looking handheld. It's a shame nobody did an ARM compatibility library for Android on the MIPS, which would allow running ARM apps without recompilation on it, something like libhoudini for Android on Intel.


To be honest it's a warped version of free market capitalism. The problem is we still don't know what to do when a company is so big that it destroys the free market. I wish Intel was divided several years ago in at least three independent entities: cores, CPUs and FABs.

The answer to that is too obvious : if people really believe in free markets, they set up systems to protect them. As it is, all the "free market" swill being bandied about is just a bunch of lies to whitewash a plutocracy that does whatever it damned well pleases.

The terminal state of a market is that someone "wins" (and, understandably, then tries to keep on winning). Anti-trust regulation is not what it used to be.

Not yet. Working on it.

Thanks for all you've done. OpenBSD on Loongson is really fantastic.

Now if someone can get IRIX running on Lemote boxes... !

hehe question, which is possible, port IRIX to a new machine? or make a new machine that can run IRIX? or both are the same?

currently i'm also busy doing a project that you can carry around your O2 with 1600SW, i just hope this is worth hehe