Porting X is probably very easy since NetBSD for Acer Pica has an already working
X server. Aside of this I'm the type lauch X only for ghostview, so don't expect
X from me this century. I don't expect others to share my flavour :-)
In case you wonder, I'm asking this because I'm thinking of buying a non-Intel
Linux machine, both because of the performance and because of my need to hack
on something different... and a port of X is something I could do, being not
TOO low level... ;-)
>this board (or probably in the meantime successors - it's now about two years old)
>are only being sold in Taiwan from where we ordered it.
The good news is that Acer has a good reputation of building stable machines...
I once had an EISA mb from them, and performed quite well. When I tried to use
its vlb bus it was another story, thouugh... :(
The board is indeed very reliable as long as the CPU cooler is supplied with power ...
One of my clients has an Indy. It will be either my or my girlfriend's
workstation. We could very well help with this. If things get serious, we might
think of buying a somewhat older Indigo first model or Crimson and try those
too. Since it is our favourite platform, it would be a pleasure... ;-)
>Btw. - the now dead Mips Computer Systems, Inc. developed the Magnum, not SGI.
Yeah I know, but the Mips who makes processor was bought from SGI. I assumed
that that Mips and the one who made the Magnum where the same.
AFAIK Mips Computer Systems, Inc. was wholy owned by the processor company Mips.
When SGI bought Mips they shutdown the development of by Mips Computer Systems
and took for the releaving service for old Mips Systems like a bit of OS tweaking,
hardware and so. Hope this explains it a bit. The whole story is pretty complicated
and you should better ask some tie from SGI about it.
Just for history: I seem to rimember a computer from NEC, made for Windows NT,
which had a MIPS too... you know, those times before Alpha and PPC... ;-) If
you want, I'll look up in my collection of BYTE Mag...
Yes there exists a series of NEC computers with MIPS processors. But that's about
all I know about them. Toshiba was developing a Mips chipset with PCI support.
By now there should by machines out for quite some time; they'd probably make an
attractive target for Linux though they were built for NT.
Ralf