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Journal larry bagina's Journal: Non x86 computers? 4

Journal by larry bagina on Friday June 29, 2007 @08:02PM

Assume you'd like a reasonably modern, reasonably fast, reasonably priced non x86 computer (for use with *BSD, linux, etc). Maybe you're a contrarian. Maybe you're sick of the errata. Maybe your job at intel got outsourced and your just a little resentful. What are the options? There are inexpensive used Sun Sparc machines. PPC macintoshes are still available, and the XBox 360/PS3 are a possibility. Are there any general purpose ARM computers which don't include the word "dev board" in their title? Any others?

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Non x86 computers?

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Sun boxes (Score:1)

by grub ( 11606 ) writes:

Used Sun boxes can be had relatively cheap (compared to their retail prices, not necessarily the price of building your own x86 clone box). I have an old SGI Indigo 2 here at home which is still running IRIX. Older than the hills but still a usable system. I think there's some version of NetBSD which will run on it fine.

The thing about those proprietary boxes is the hardware seems to be so damn well built that the things are tanks, other than disks they don't seem to die. You won't get 16 cores running und
- Re: (Score:1)
  
  by larry bagina ( 561269 ) writes:
  
  thanks. I've been looking at the freebsd/linux platform support docs, but too often it only mentions a motherboard model #.
  - Re: (Score:1)
    
    by grub ( 11606 ) writes:
    
    Unfortunately FreeBSD isn't supported on a lot of architectures. NetBSD supports everything but your toaster [netbsd.org]. OpenBSD supports an impressive number as well [openbsd.org] and has excellent Sun support. If memory serves, Theo de Raadt was the Sun maintainer for the NetBSD project before he started OpenBSD. Based on mailings to the lists I think he still has a soft spot for Sun. I have OpenBSD 4.0 running at work on a Sun box (forget the exact model, can get that Tuesday) and it's been great.
DEC Alpha (Score:1)

by Pikoro ( 844299 ) writes:

Go search ebay for DEC Alpha boards and chips. They're supported by most flavors of linux as well as windows NT. 64 bit chip up to about 1Ghz. I have 3 of them myself and they are speedy.

Just watch the video card support. The older Matrox cards seem to be the most supported.

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