It looks like Martin Michlmayr of Debian fame has released a mini-howto discussing Sarge on Cobalt's MIPs machines, including the Qube 2 that I own. Something to add to my list of tasks :)

With my hobby (collecting older and more unusual computer systems) I find it hard sometimes to provide reasoning or explaination as to why I have the equipment. Computers have until recently been work horses, and not things you amass simply for fun. Because of this natural association with computers and their ability to work, I have difficulty sometimes explaining to others why I simply colelct them in the same way people collect coins, stamps or Barbie dolls.

In searching for a purpose for my gear, I sometimes get good ideas, like when I set my Sun Ultra 5 (with its 5 network interfaces) as a core router for our LAN at home. I'd like my Cobalt to be running a virtual radio station, using some MP3 streaming software to constantly pump out a RTSP stream that a media player application can hook into. The disk is only 8GB in size, so an upgrade would be needed there, but not huge - only in the order of 30GB or so, which I can find from my current hardware stash.