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m00dawg
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
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Location: Texas
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Redhatter
Retired Dev
Joined: 20 Sep 2003
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Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia
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 Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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Gentoo will run... it's just a matter of getting together an appropriate installation together. Normally these boards come with a distribution of Linux (mainly MontaVista's Hard Hat Linux or Debian GNU/Linux).
As there are no netboot images for those machines, this would be my plan of attack.
If you can, flick the CPU across to running Big Endian -- unless your board happens to have a MIPS IV class (R5000/RM52xx) CPU. This should allow you to use one of the SGI stage tarballs.
Then it should be a matter of netbooting the distro it comes with, then proceeding with the Gentoo/MIPS handbook (that's my dev version BTW) before referring to the relevant docs to set up the bootloader. Normally these things use U-BOOT or YAMON as the bootloader, it should come with one, and the instructions to use it.
So from a theoretical point of view -- yes, Gentoo should run... but it'll take a bit of hacking.
As to the cost of these boards... I have no idea, I know there in the $1000's... but the exact price I think you'll have to talk to the sales droids at the company involved.
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Stuart Longland (a.k.a Redhatter, VK4MSL)
I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on a tape somewhere...
Gentoo/MIPS Cobalt developer, Mozilla herd member. |
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Sanguinary
n00b
Joined: 17 Oct 2004
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:08 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo On a Malta Development Board? |
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| m00dawg wrote: | | So I was hunting around mips.com and noticed that have a development board (that is an ATX form factor, no less). Has anyone run Gentoo off one of these things and how much does the board & chip cost? |
Another possibility would be PMC Sierra's Xiao Hu boards, which I think are supposed to be $199. As with the Malta boards, it may be more of a matter of getting them to sell you one, more than any trouble in getting Gentoo to work. |
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m00dawg
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
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Location: Texas
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:26 am Post subject: |
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Wow that thing looks really neat! Alas, $1000 is WAY out of my price range, but if this is just a few hundred as you say, that may just be worth it.
Wow thanks for the link!
(And thanks also to you, RedHatter, for the info...even though the price made me pass out  )
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Sanguinary
n00b
Joined: 17 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:08 am Post subject: |
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| m00dawg wrote: | | Wow that thing looks really neat! Alas, $1000 is WAY out of my price range, but if this is just a few hundred as you say, that may just be worth it. |
I'm pretty sure the Xiao Hu boards are in the roughly $200 price range. I never really looked into it, because the attitude (as suggested by the PMC Sierra web site) seems to be that you have to get permission to buy one--i.e., "If you want to buy, email our sales department to discuss." I wonder about products which the maker doesn't seem eager to sell.
I don't think the price/performance will be particularly good at $200, but it would be low heat and low power consumption. |
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m00dawg
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Posts: 145
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, I would consider it a novelty fun device really. I suppose if it has enough power, one could use it as a media player for a stereo. I doubt it would have enough umph for something like MythTV, but you never know.
I e-mailed them asking about purchasing options and have yet to hear back from them (it's been about two days or so). So we shall see.
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Sanguinary
n00b
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 12:39 am Post subject: |
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| m00dawg wrote: | | I e-mailed them asking about purchasing options and have yet to hear back from them (it's been about two days or so). So we shall see. |
I'd be interested to hear how they reply (if they do). |
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m00dawg
Tux's lil' helper
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Location: Texas
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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Actually they did. They gave me a number to contant (an FAE? not sure what that is). I haven't called him yet, and I am kinda hesitant since I am not ready to buy the thing just yet. But they haven't said no yet
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Sanguinary
n00b
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| Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 12:38 pm Post subject: |
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| m00dawg wrote: | | Actually they did. They gave me a number to contant (an FAE? not sure what that is). I haven't called him yet, and I am kinda hesitant since I am not ready to buy the thing just yet. But they haven't said no yet |
Did you ever look into this further? |
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m00dawg
Tux's lil' helper
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| Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Sanguinary wrote: | | Did you ever look into this further? |
I got into contact with one of the persons that could actually sell the thing, but aftert his initial e-mail, he failed to e-mail me back with any information. I would imagine that if I bugged him more he might but I am not ready to purchase the board just yet so I decided not to pursue it at this time. Suffice to say, I think you can purchase this board reasonably easy; it just takes a little more work.
If you're interested, all I did was e-mail one of their division managers which you can grab off the site. He referred me to the person to contact for my area. Or something like that  You can also call them and I am sure they can help you out.
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Gentoo on Alternative Architectures
